Together with the toilet app HogeNood, the Toilet Alliance has compiled a list of Dutch municipalities that are the most toilet-friendly.

Ranking of toilet facilities in the Netherlands

While it may sound odd to rank how “toilet-friendly” a city in the Netherlands is, if you’ve ever experienced the struggle with finding a toilet while out and about, you will understand why this survey takes place every year. 

The Toilet Alliance is a group of organisations that have the mission of ensuring there are enough public and open toilets available across the country. To draw attention to the situation and to encourage municipalities to make improvements, a ranking is compiled every year with help from HogeNood - an app for your mobile phone that shows you the location of public toilets and open toilets near you. Open toilets refer to those in government buildings, shops and catering establishments.

There are six indicators that the ranking uses to compare all 342 of the Dutch municipalities:

• Number of inhabitants per toilet and overnight tourists per toilet
• Accessibility - wheelchair accessible and sit-down toilets receive more points than urinals
• Distribution - the more toilets within 500 metres, the more points
• Number of public toilets compared to open toilets 
• Toilet policies
• Ability to add data to HogeNood app

West Maas en Waal most toilet-friendly Dutch municipality

For the second year in a row, the municipality of West Maas en Waal, which lies near Den Bosch, has come up on top. What shot the municipality into the winning seat yet again is the fact that six additional toilets were added to the HogeNood app.

“For just over 20,000 residents, we have a few dozen public toilets, well distributed across the eight centres of the municipality,” the municipality Alderman Rob Reuvers told Omroep GLD. “It is the feather in the cap of the policy that the municipality has been pursuing since 2022.”

The municipality has a policy which aims to see public toilets in all public buildings, community centres, sports clubs and even in business establishments that allow it. “We want to maintain the coverage and preferably expand it. Whether we remain number one is less important."

75 percent of Dutch municipalities do not have enough public toilets

According to the Toilet Alliance, three-quarters of Dutch cities did not have sufficient toilet facilities, marking them down on toilet-friendliness. In fact, three municipalities were considered so bad that they received scores of zero; Baarle-Nassau, Rozendaal and Voerendaal were found at the bottom of the rankings.

You may be wondering how the bigger Dutch cities fared. Amsterdam might be a hub for bars and museums, but there is definitely a shortage of toilets, which is how the Dutch capital earned itself the 63rd position in the ranking. The Hague didn’t do any better, coming in 120th place. On the other hand, Utrecht and Rotterdam both made it into the top 10, coming in 4th and 8th position respectively.

Top 10 most toilet-friendly municipalities in the Netherlands

In all, these were the municipalities that scored the highest for toilet-friendliness:

1. West Maas en Waal
2. Amersfoort
3. Veere
4. Utrecht
5. Vught
6. Heerlen
7. Velsen
8. Rotterdam
9. Assen
10. Roosendaal

For more information or to see the full ranking, visit the Toilet Alliance website.