Challenging no single sex toilets at work

[quote Reptar]''The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 state under Regulation 20 that employers need to provide separate rooms containing toilets for men and women.
Toilets used by women must also be provided with facilities for disposing of sanitary towels.''
worksmart.org.uk/health-advice/where-you-work/toilets-and-washrooms/does-my-employer-have-provide-separate-male-and[/quote]
I feel uncomfortable and unsafe. My dignity is important.

How can they argue against that?

Ask your management for a copy of their risk assessment as well as their equality assessment for this change of facilities. What safeguards are they putting in place to stop covert filming? Have they alarms in place in cubicles in case someone is pushed into one by an attacker and then locked in? Have they factored in extra cleaning necessary for such facilities, given that urinals have been removed? Have they provision for male and female employees who may not be able to use these facilities because of their reloigious beliefs?

People making decisions should be aware that the Government is looking at policy in this area.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10148817/Men-women-separate-toilets-plans-away-gender-neutral-loos.html

if cubicles are in a separate room accessed by an outside door then these are not single occupancy toilets. Single occupancy toilets are single rooms with walls not merely partitions and open out into an open area.

I'm fully GC, but I'm not sure how strong your case is here. If the only possible 'mixed space' is the small corridor that leads to the individual toilets, how is that worse than any other corridor in the building?

the fact that men make more of a mess of the toilet etc is a pain, but that should be dealt with by officious notices on keeping the area clean + plenty of cleaners. men shouldn't have to put up with stinky loos any more than women should.

I'd also add something that happened in a women's toilet pre-lockdown, an older woman having an accident in the cubicle and needing help from other women in the washbasin area. This could have been exposing and embarrassing in a mixed sex space, rather than in a community of fellow women. Women need toilets for things other than going to the toilet, and sometimes will, unexpectedly, need to call on the aid of others.

Does each cubicle contain a sanitary waste bin? If not, its not designed to be used by women.

There's actually lots of research to support single sex toilets. For Women Scotland have this primer which is about schools but includes a number of points that apply to workplaces too
school toilets

They also produced this more detailed document which mentions that the Royal Society for Public Health stated a fair ratio for female to male toilets was 2:1 . This was in relation to public toilets but women in the workplace have the same needs regarding toilet provision. Moving to gender neutral decreases the number of toilets available to women because they will self-exclude due to issues like DV; period poverty, etc. It also includes research from the Washroom Services Association that says gender neutral toilets don't work and that they have seen a trend of gender neutral toilets being fitted and then reverting back to single sex - so for your company gender neutral represents a flawed financial decision too.
FWS Detailed Toilet Provision

I use mixed sex as it makes it much clearer.

I think there’s an article from a few years back highlighting that 90% of incidents in changing rooms occur in mixed sex spaces.

I’d ask what it meant for changing rooms or external venues (lunch venues, conference venues, train stations etc) - if they’re saying it’s safe internally are they saying it’s safe everywhere and will they provide financial compensation if incidents occur.

I’d ask where the pressure for mixed sex loos was coming from and I’d send a link to the Nolan podcasts and maybe a few pdfs of the recent Times articles on Stonewall.

I’d send stats on patterns of offending and the pay gap.

I don’t know that you need to send anything too personal at this stage unless you are really comfortable with that as you don’t know where that info will end up. You could say many victims of DV will struggle.

I think you need to contact support near your location

As long as the new toilets have proper floor to ceiling walls and doors, and are completely self contained (include hand washing and drying facilities) this is perfectly legal. And I don’t really understand the problem with them?

Just come put of a meeting discussing toilet facilities in a new set up. We are going for gender neutral, individual, seperate entrance and wash basin for each loo. But that was purely driven by not knowing what the sex balance of employees will be and needing to minimise cost and space used.

Point out that it discriminates against Muslim
and orthodox women, who now can’t come to work as there are no single sex toilets.
Ask them if they have risk assessed, checked they are compliant with legislation, etc. Ask if the workforce have been consulted and what their views were.

''The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 state under Regulation 20 that employers need to provide separate rooms containing toilets for men and women.
Toilets used by women must also be provided with facilities for disposing of sanitary towels.''
worksmart.org.uk/health-advice/where-you-work/toilets-and-washrooms/does-my-employer-have-provide-separate-male-and