There’s quite a lot of information about public toilets closing and why. It boils down to safety concerns and economics of repairing and cleaning up misuse.
The Sexual Offences Act did not stop people having sex in toilets. In fact, toilets still get a reputation and people still organise online to meet there which causes toilets to be shut down for ‘lewd’ behaviour. Even in 2008 The Provision of Public Toilets this was noted. It was also noted that ‘loos of the year’ still get targeted for sex. So do plane toilets, which is the only incident (but not in UK) I know of a woman charged with sexual offence (teacher with a pupil on a school trip). You have to really research a lot to find that though. Most incidents are of men abusing children and women in plane toilets. The Act didn’t stop voyeurism either and now we have hidden cameras, enclosing toilets to stop voyeurism is useless. In 2008, there was much debate about private unisex toilets but it was recognised it was not advantageous for women.
I believe the answer is to make toilets more open but have gaps that are around a kitchen kickboard height at the floor-door and the partitions/door be around 2m tall, then space to the ceiling. Tall ceilings are good. Natural light is good so you are not reliant on arrival lights if the electricity goes off. We should be having proper experiments to analyse the optimum design.
The two transactivist Americans that have been championing the rise of private gender neutral toilets and calling it a social justice movement have backgrounds in studying cruising in men’s public toilets and queer studies. There’s not a female insight. Some of their earlier papers are eye-opening. They have not done any health and safety assessments that I know of, and (as of April 2024 when he admitted it) no analysis on the toilets they have put in schools or public buildings.
In the U.K. recently there are some women at universities that have been looking at toilets but they are not from a scientific, architectural or medical background. They wrote a paper on women’s safety in toilets but it was for transwomen, they didn’t look at biological women and their physical safety. The same group joined a letter writing campaign with Stonewall for document T. There was a lot of people going on about safety, and 2/3 quoting a report Stonewall did where, looking at it completely objectively, a man got shouted at then pushed out of the ladies by two women. There’s no realisation about the design consequences of making toilets unisex/gender-neutral/universal even though there were so many promoting them.
Going back to this case, in absolute terms of health and safety, of course single sex toilet designs are going to be healthier and safer than unisex, especially for women. For exactly the same reasons (enclosed, mix-sex), it is why I have found disabled toilets are the locations of misuse, assaults and deaths.
The judge has brought aspects of health and safety up in her judgement so the appeal can mention this. There are times when we have to have unisex toilets but, as Doc T says, only after the regs for single sex toilets have been satisfied.
Also note I am being more NC and using correct men and women definitions in the above. That’s common sense too when talking about toilets as the behaviour is so dependent on what sex you are.