BLACKPOOL council has rejected proposals to shut down Claremont toilets, described by Which magazine as among the worst in the country.

At a council meeting some Conservative councillors called for the immediate closure of the loos.

Tory Coun Henry Mitchell has been heading the campaign and said at the meeting: "I think they are a disgrace to the town. They don't do Blackpool's image any good at all and I'm moving that this council close Claremont toilets."

Coun Maxine Callow (Conservative) added: "Those have been named as the most disgusting in the country. That's not the sort of publicity we want to attract to Blackpool when tourism is our livelihood. If you walked in the door you would not use them -- you would walk straight back out again. It's a bad advert for Blackpool."

But Labour's Coun Allan Matthews proposed to leave the Claremont toilets open and tackle Blackpool's poor public facilities altogether, when the council's 'Best Value' scheme comes into practice.

Coun Matthews said: "In the very near future we hope to have the finest public toilets in Lancashire."

But Claremont Coun Ivan Taylor (Labour) said that there were more important problems in the area. "Claremont toilets are not top of the list of concerns of people who live in that ward.

"We accept that they're in poor condition but so are others. Have we got to close those as well? The logic with this is to close the lot and leave us without any toilets throughout the Blackpool season."

He added: "We're going to see a comprehensive approach which will raise the standards of the toilets as a whole -- that's the way of dealing with it."

The committee voted against the closure of the toilets, but after the vote five members requested that the decision be made subject to approval by the council.