Any attempt by government to reduce its expenditure can generally be welcomed – especially by a newspaper which believes, and can point to the evidence, that the States of Guernsey is too big and too expensive.

However, Treasury and Resources’s determination to close the Castle Emplacement toilets is wrong – and has the potential to rebound on it.

Unless the department sees sense – that this is an area so remote from other facilities that the loos have to be retained – it will face a mauling in the States.

And the anger felt by deputies towards the already ailing financial transformation programme over the cost being paid to consultants not to deliver threatens to derail the whole programme.

The other problem is T&R’s reluctance to come clean over what exactly it is up to.

It has refused to say how much closing the emplacement facilities will save, although its figures suggest that closing two and restricting the opening hours of four others is supposed to provide economies of £114,000.

Yet that works out at £19,000 per location, which seems far too high. However, there are actually 32 facilities in the island and closing or restricting the use of that number reflects a saving of £3,560 per unit, a far more believable sum.

So which other toilets are on its hit list?

Even then, the figures don’t work.

Consultants Tribal said some 12 months ago that rationalising the network would reduce costs by £250,000 by saving on cleaning, maintenance and vandalism costs.

So why is there a £136,000 discrepancy between Tribal’s and T&R’s figures? What additional cost-saving measures has the department rejected?

And why was a decent, hard-working kiosk owner at the emplacement told that the toilets would remain open – only to hear from his own customers that T&R had reneged on its earlier promise.

Treasury needs to call a halt to this senseless planned closure and have the courtesy to explain to islanders exactly what it is playing at.

And whether it decided to carry out a toilet use survey in one of the coldest Novembers on record to get the result it wanted.