New data from Tripadvisor has revealed the areas with the dirtiest restaurant and pub toilets in post-lockdown Britain.
The research comes as diners are encouraged to 'eat out to help out' by the UK government, as part of a new bid to boost the economy.
More than ever, cleanliness and hygiene matter for those looking to go to a restaurant, and certain areas of the country appear to have a better reputation for keeping their ablutions cleaner than others.
The research, carried out by Latham's Hardware, scraped the Tripadvisor reviews of about 110,000 pubs and restaurants in the UK (excluding Northern Ireland) and isolated any reviews where the customer had specifically mentioned the toilets. That left the researchers with 12,041 reviews.
Of those 12,041 Tripadvisor reviews, data shows the comments are rarely positive, with the majority of keywords having a negative sentiment including “dirty”, “filthy”, “smelly”, “disgusted” and “awful”.
An interactive map can be found here.
Where are the dirtiest toilets in restaurants and pubs across the UK?
Unsurprisingly, London had the highest number of complaints by quite a significant margin.
However, to make the data fairer, the researchers created a “proportional” total of complaints that took into account respective population sizes.
When population numbers are taken into account, the study revealed that Edinburgh generally has the worst reviews followed by Glasgow.
Here are the worst locations...
1. City of Edinburgh
2. City of Glasgow
3. East Sussex
4. Stirling
5. Isle of Wight
6. Cornwall
7. Cumbria
8. City of Bristol
9. North Yorkshire
10. Oxfordshire
What about in Wales?
Of six Welsh regions, North Wales had the worst reviews for toilet cleanlinesss, followed by Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion. Powys had the cleanest toilets.
Where are the top areas for toilet cleanliness?
Analysing the top areas for toilet cleanliness (taking into account population sizes), county and council areas in Scotland take the six top spots here too.
Bedfordshire, on the other hand, has the cleanest toilets in England closely followed by South Yorkshire and Northamptonshire.
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