Bridget Phillipson blocking EHRC guidance - thread 2

The newly branded ‘inclusive’ designs have no data. Their claim to safety is the feeling that the good people (men?) will look out for the bad people and there’s less likely to be trouble as there’s more people about as everyone will use them. In reality what happens is that women and girls self exclude. And as many real life examples show, they put women, children and people having medical emergencies at risk.

Disabled toilets, superloos, unisex toilets in train carriages and now the mixed sex varieties we have at secondary schools don’t have great health and safety records.

Yes so if it’s this complex with toilets it can be seen that single sex provision takes a while to look at. EHRC are not health and safety experts.

The guidance isn’t about toilets, it’s about all single sex provision.

What do those who think that enclosed mixed sex loos are the solution think the solution is for changing rooms, hospital wards, sports, refuges etc.

Enclosed cubicles are frequently being is presented as a gotcha on X. TRAs love to keep the focus on toilets.

There is an unofficial campaign to suggest that these mixed sex, private designed toilets are the sensible way forward and are actually safer than any other design.

I think its because they are relatively new and people assume that they are the result of years of data and design.

Just a warning the next bit may be a bit distressing because it involves details of a sexual assault but I want to make an important point here.

I have no idea what the EHRC have actually advised the government to do about toilets but I do know what they had in the consultation which I opposed in part, with real life examples of why I was opposing it.

This week another man was jailed for trapping and assaulting a woman in a mixed sex, fully enclosed toilet in a public area. He was thumping at the door, she opened it not knowing who’s outside but thought they desperately needed the loo, he pushed her back in and locked the door. She was screaming but no one came to her aid. The brave woman told police afterwards.

Yet the EHRC consultation suggested a similar design could retrospectively be added to provision in a shopping centre as a quick fix win. They did not think through the negative repercussions of creating more mixed sex, private spaces in a public area.

Universal toilet doors are designed to be resistant to the passage of sound. Single sex toilets in a single sex environment can have door gap under and over the door (and partitions), for visual and audible supervision, whilst maintaining a good degree privacy for the occupant. Universal toilets do not have door gaps because of male voyeurism and maintaining dignity. ‘Inclusive’ designs have no door gaps. If there’s ambiguity about who is in front of the cubicle door, the designs go up to the ceiling and down to the floor.

Do the EHRC not realise these new private unsupervised toilets could be misused until they close down? Much of the public toilet provision already has because of cost and misuse. The evidence is all there - mixed sex private disabled toilets had an expensive radar key scheme because they were targeted for misuse (sex, drugs, parties, vandalism, rough sleeping). If you look at what happens in ‘inclusive’ designs in schools it informs you what will happen in wider society too.

There’s no actual public sector duty for councils to provide toilets anyway though that may change soon. Getting it wrong is a waste of money and more importantly causes harm.

I really hope the government are using this time to do proper risk assessments and equality impact assessments. If any toilets are to be added, it should be disabled-friendly toilets within single sex provision.

We need as little mixed sex, private designed provision as possible.

It worries me how often, among those in charge within organisations, safeguarding is deemed secondary to maintaining someone’s (often a man) good reputation.

It seems as though the basics of good safeguarding have not taken root despite endless training and policy writing: no-one should be treated as an exception just because you personally know and trust them or you believe them incapable of wrongdoing. There should be no sacred castes.

We don’t have to cast aspersions on the character of others or see this as a stain on someone’s honour, we don’t have to be rude in maintaining vigilance. We just have to be practical and consistent in reducing loopholes that can be used by those without good intentions.

I think the positive action and fostering good relation to support the EqA, has been used to advantage men at the expense of women and children.

The way politicians are tying themselves up in knots for these men, proves that they know they aren't women.

Ive seen legal people talk of balancing of rights, too. Showing that they think safeguarding is something that's negotiable if a man wants it.

Yes, their insistence on inclusivity only works if they resolutely refuse to consider what actually happens on the ground in reality.

In their heads, there's no risk because it's flamboyantly-dressed feminine men who want to use the ladies simply because they love being around women. Whereas, in reality, where the rest of us live, it's men of every type and stripe being given an open, all-season pass to entering areas where women and children are vulnerable.

Politicians and TUs want to upend an important social convention, that helped with a basic level of safeguarding, for an poorly thought out belief that only ever exists in their heads.

Edited: spelling

If I had any say, I would use this moment as a momentous change for good, and make sure we had the healthiest and safest toilet provision in the world. Toilets are so fundamental. I am hoping that’s why it is taking a while. (And that’s just toilets).

When you actually look at what goes on in non-domestic toilets then the only thing that makes sense is single sex toilets in a single sex environment. However, this is not always possible or practical, so there are exceptions.

If you look at absolute risk, there are more medical professionals that have died of drug overdoses in hospital toilets 2020-2022 (7 in England, Wales and NI) than transpeople that have been killed in toilets (0 for all years as far as I know in the UK). As well as the drug poster campaign in toilets that the researchers recommended, I would recommend toilets had door gaps at the bottom of staff toilets so you could see if someone had collapsed in the place where they could have the best chance of being saved if others could see them. But that requires the toilets to be in a single sex environment. It’s a practical ‘supervision and prevention of misuse’ solution that was written down at the time of the 1992 legislation.

No one has pieced all the information together until now. There will be a lot of information from Document T consultations but the vast majority was collated from people who had sent in Stonewall-et-al led answers. Even when women’s safety was mentioned, the analysis showed the phrasing used was from stock answers because it specifically kept mentioning ‘black women, lesbians, and butch women’. I have traced that back to the source.

Despite safety concerns for trans/non-binary people being mentioned in 79% of responses to the call for evidence, Document T still put single sex toilets first. This shows that when it went back to the health and safety bods they decided the huge call for ‘non-gendered’ toilets wasn’t going to work.

Unfortunately although what did get lost was the design reasons single sex toilets are safer in medical emergencies - the door gaps. HSE have confirmed the single sex designs can have door gaps (designs C and D) in a single sex environment but although they are allowed, the designs don’t specifically mention them. This is a massive oversight which will lead to unnecessary harm. The analysis that SHOULD have picked this up did not because even though their remit was to look at part M of building regs and ambulant people using toilets with long term health problems, they forgot to look at many of the long term health conditions where a door gap could be life saving in an emergency. However that particular report did discuss non binary crotch heights for urinals and had references to transactivist toilet designers preference for enclosed toilets for inclusivity.

In the rush for ‘inclusive’ toilets, the ones they least disadvantage is men who are physically and mentally healthy.

I get the impression that governments/authorities when confronted with a problem dont speak to all the relevant expertise right from the start.

They've always seen the problem as 'how to increase trans inclusion', and ignored the point of single sex by assuming that a few men in a few single sex spaces sometimes doesnt count.

Then when having to deal with the problem of single sex means single sex, i think, decide to change single sex to unisex. But they havent thought the unisex doesnt mean a sign, and unisex isnt adequate for all situations.

Maybe they knew right from the start that speaking to the relevant people would lead to being told trans inclusion and inadequate unisex facilities wouldn't work, but thought they could get away with it?

Or that inclusion is more important than saftey?

I think you are right in that they are trying to find a quick fix but then realised that there’s not one. If you look at all the analysis for Document T you will see they did costings etc and the final document says that it not retrospective ie this is for toilets being refurbished or new ones going forward from 2024. However, now there’s more emphasis that this has got to be right.

Sex Matters are right in their assessment. If venues etc had always worked to British Standards and legislation that’s been around since 1992, they mostly shouldn’t have any problems with what EHRC and the government decide.

The biggest headache is telling all the venues (inc up to 25% of schools which aren’t even covered by 1992 legislation) that all their new inclusive toilets have to be changed. That comes at a massive cost to some businesses. Hopefully most can rejig them back but schools are a problem as many new schools were built with unisex toilets from the start in the design you describe. Schools are a problem because those designs aren’t as safe or healthy as single sex designs.

Forget university for your children, we need plumbers!

Edit: my conclusion is that all health and safety legislation never took into consideration that men would be going into women’s toilets with a safer single sex design and this be ‘acceptable’ or ‘allowed’. Nothing is geared up to this situation as it would have sounded too far-fetched.

I didnt say i agreed with it!

I just wonder if thats what they are trying to do behind the scenes and thats why its taking so long.

@Pingponghavoc British Standards and Health and Safety requirements are there for a reason.

These, in brief, are the options:

1. Single sex are single sex
2. Single sex toilets and changing rooms are mixed sex but use single sex designs. Voyeurism laws have to change. Building Standards, building regs, 1974 and 1992 legislation and the Sexual Offenses Act has to be modified. No risk assessments and EIA done because it would make this option null and void.
3. Single sex toilets all become mixed sex designs. Costs a fortune. Less provision. Discrimination against certain disabilities, religions, age, sex. Less healthy and less safe toilet designs for everyone (scientifically proven). No risk assessments and EIA done because it would make this option null and void.

Just seen it, thanks.

@KeepToiletsSafe might have an opinion on that.

And I don't want the sinks in a mixed space outside the loo when I get a flood.

Actually you did. @SinnerBoy corrected himself. You may have missed it.

I did ask the same, never got a response.

I do 😊

Interesting that the writer is LGB Alliance and fed up with being lumped in with trans.

It's not a great look for Bridget Phillipson that people are just getting on with setting up single-sex spaces and eroding her authority while she fannies about.

Yes I agree. I think the guardian is writing what it would like to happen rather than what is happening

I don't think the Guardian has any new info, despite how they are trying to spin things in that article. I suspect Mary Ann Stephenson is saying the same things as Baroness Faulkner, but perhaps in a nicer way.

A very clear and forthright article.