​The City shares the public’s view of the importance of these beach boxes as an iconic and historical part of the St. James landscape and assures the public that they will remain part of the St James landscape in the future.

The challenging maintenance and security issues associated with these bathing boxes is currently being revisited and addressed through the City’s Coastal Optimisation process. Proposed solutions have been developed and will be communicated to the public once endorsed by the City.

It should, however, be noted that considering our current societal challenges in public places it is increasingly difficult to retain and maintain these kinds of accessible and open public assets as they are very prone to high levels of vandalism, public security risks and abuse.

We, however, do understand and share the sentiment that the bathing boxes form a very important part of Cape Towns’ coastal sense of place and identity and we will do our utmost to attain a meaningful and measured balance in retaining some aspects of this into the future.