{"id":637103,"date":"2026-10-21T06:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T06:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/637103\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T06:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T06:50:09","slug":"spate-of-toilet-vandalism-in-taranaki-towns-pushes-repair-bill-to-45k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/637103\/","title":{"rendered":"Spate of toilet vandalism in Taranaki towns pushes repair bill to $45k"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Vandals have targeted public toilets in Waitara, Urenui and Inglewood over the past week, as New Plymouth District Council\u2019s repair bill for damaged facilities climbs to $45,000 this year.<\/p>\n<p>The bill is up from $25,000 at the same point last year.<\/p>\n<p>A photo released by the council showed one toilet floor covered in large shards of smashed white panelling and shredded paper towels. <\/p>\n<p>A grey bin had been knocked on its side, its blue lid lying nearby, and a round white fitting lay broken in the middle of the floor.<\/p>\n<p>The stainless steel toilet and basin appeared to have survived intact.<\/p>\n<p>A council spokesperson said the damage was hitting residents in the pocket.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPublic toilet vandalism is costing our community thousands,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<p>Waitara and Urenui sit on the coast north-east of New Plymouth, while Inglewood is inland to the south-east, on State Highway 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vandals have targeted public toilets in Waitara, Urenui and Inglewood over the past week, as New Plymouth District&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[67,111,43,139,69,16715],"class_list":["post-637103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-taranaki"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}