Community
14 December, 2025
Public toilet re-opens at Sutton Forest after 30-year fight
Residents of Sutton Forest and visitors to the Southern Highlands rejoice.
Residents of Sutton Forest and visitors to the Southern Highlands rejoice.
Wingecarribee Shire Council has acted on a ‘robust’ discussion at its September meeting and has opened the male toilet at the rear of the Sutton Forest Village Hall as a public unisex facility.
It follows claims that people were urinating in public at all times of the day and night – often in full view of families – because there were no public toilet facilities in Sutton Forest.
The village’s public toilets were demolished in the 1990s and never replaced.
The male toilet at the rear of the hall was never considered a ‘public’ toilet and was never used as such – hence the problem. It has been closed for an extended period of time for safety reasons.
The nearest toilets are located at businesses such as McDonalds and service centres located directly off the Hume Highway, providing little immediate comfort for people who have turned off the highway to take a break in Sutton Forest
Council announced last week that Sutton Forest now officially had a public toilet.
“After community advocacy, a robust debate in the council chambers and council staff co-ordinating the upgrade of the existing toilet at the back of the Sutton Forest Village Hall, locals and visitors to Sutton Forest won't be caught short!” it said in a Facebook post.
The debate was not only spirited – it was also one of the longest during the current term of council and dominated most of the September meeting.
One local business, The Coffee Kiosk, has welcomed the news.
“It’s going to be a fantastic addition for our growing community, local tradies, passing tourists, and of course our Coffee Kiosk customers,” the business said.
“It’s something that’s been much needed in the area, and we’re really grateful to see it in place.”
Architect Kathy Barnsley, secretary of the Sutton Forest Business Association, addressed council’s public forum in September.
She told councillors that she lived alongside the hall and that she regularly observed people pull up, find the toilet locked and “do their business on the ground”.
She said it was a “beautiful” place for people to stop – including families – but the community had lobbied “many times” over the years for a new public toilet without success.
She said the hall looked like a facility with a public toilet but when passing motorists stopped and found that it didn’t, they would “do their thing” elsewhere.
Former lawyer and current bookstore owner Garry Barnsley OAM told councillors that his family had been involved in the Sutton Forest area as “builders of community capacity” for seven generations.
He said Hillview Estate could soon attract international interest – along the same lines as Dunfries House in Scotland – yet Sutton Forest lacked a ‘humble’ public toilet.
Mr Barnsley said he helped clean the old public toilets in Sutton Forest but had made the mistake of asking council for help.
He said council’s response had been immediate – they sent out a contractor early one Sunday morning to knock the toilets down.
Mr Barnsley told councillors that he encountered ‘countless’ people every day looking for public toilets and found it cruel to tell them that the nearest toilets were 10 minutes away.
“I don’t look around this room and find faces of cruelty – I see faces of kindness,” he said.
He suggested that council could solve the problem at “minimal expense, maximum benefit”.
The debate started at council’s September meeting after Sutton Forest was left off council’s draft public toilet plan.
Staff argued at the time that there were ‘complexities’ opening the male toilet at the rear of Sutton Forest Village Hall as a public facility because it represented a change in use and council would be unable to meet current requirements given the state of the hall.
It is unknown what has changed since the September meeting in relation to that matter.
Read More: Sutton Forest, Southern Highlands