Coventry’s new cabinet has pledged to resolve the city centre’s toilet shortage and to go back to the drawing board over the Single Status pay negotiations with staff.

Deputy leader John Mutton, who is responsible for the council’s resources in the new set-up said the negotiations had been “one of the most monumental cock-ups of all time.”

He pledged to find a new way of sorting out the deal so the city council could get back on good terms with its staff and its unions.

Cllr Mutton, himself a former shop steward, was speaking to more than 100 members of the public in St Mary’s Guild Hall at the first ever meeting of the cabinet.

He said he planned to take a compromise deal to the Labour group and then the full council to get agreement to start afresh.

Cllr Mutton said legal requirements had to be met, but the aim had to be to get the unions and the work force back on the council’s side.

Council leader Nick Nolan said grandiose schemes had to have a place in the authority’s plans to allow Coventry to compete with other cities in attracting visitors, shoppers and businesses.

But he said the three main priorities would be “pavements, pot-holes, and public loos”.

He said:

“It seems extraordinary to me that we can build an arena and not build a public loo.

“There’s going to be a report coming back soon and it’s bound to have 101 reasons why we cannot do it.

“There’s one reason that we can do it – and that is that the people of Coventry want it.”