Full Council Chaos. Bristol City Council refusing to implement single sex services

My point was in response to what you were talking about. None of what you say above discounts it - the reasonable safety standard, the costs etc. - as these are implicitly addressed in what I write about patterns.

Your reasonable safety standard is surely best assessed based on extensive research - hence my faith in Keeptoiletssafe judgement on what's reasonable.

I'd also suggest it's not insignificant that value for money - costs - continues to be assessed through a lens which tends to undervalue women's dignity and safety.

In short, though, all of these are judgement calls. Your own above seem to be based on the personal (eg. your ref. to night clubs, anecdotal experience), and this is totally valid - we all have our own opinions. But I'd value data collection and associated patterns above this in agreeing overarching standards. The post above yours highlights the importance of these, and how easily they can be dismissed in a sexist society.

I also think the fact that changing rooms have long been single sex, with unisex only a recent development, supports what I regrettably see in arguments for "reasonably" safe unisex facilities: economising at the potentially life-changing expense (attacks and hidden cameras) of women and girls.

I haven’t seen any posts that demonstrate clearly that the costs of a mixed sex changing village are less overall than single sex provision. Can you share your evidence please?

Surely cleaning a standard single sex community al changing room with some cubicles is quicker than cleaning an entire changing village of mixed sex cubicles?

There is a fixed number of required fixtures and fittings which is tied to number of users so no economies of scale there.

Then there is the increased cost of erecting and maintaining an all cubicle provision - repairing locks, filling drilled holes etc.

Where are the direct savings?

Then you have staff time taken up by dealing with customer complaints about voyeurism, sexual assault, flashing etc and in extreme cases time as a witness in court cases etc. Shutting down the facility to sweep for spy cameras etc These incidents are almost all in mixed sex changing villages. Hardly any in single sex changing.

There is a very good reason why some police forces have objected to mixed sex changing villages - it increases their workload.

Out of interest, how would you propose to balance the highest level of safety (gaps under or over the doors) with the need to prevent voyeurism (mostly done by putting a camera over or under the door)?

You’re also missing my point - there is no single right or wrong answer because the hazards and risks in every single place are going to be different.

I’d say that the hazard and risk associated with collapsing behind a full height door during a medical episode is pretty similar in every situation.

I guess the only variable might be whether it takes a couple of hours to notice a unit occupied for an abnormal amount of time in a busy location or whether it is only discovered by a cleaner when the building is closed after hours or whether it is a quiet corridor in a 24 hour building like a hospital where a cleaner will just skip and occupied room and only realise there is a problem days later. I think this extremely tragic situation has occurred already.

I think if we need to balance needs and requirements, the safety aspect that could literally save a life should be top of the list?

Perhaps you are the one missing the point.

All risk assessments for toilet requirements should have as a high priority that issue of preventing deaths or serious health complications due to collapsing in a cubicle. This is where having gaps that allow quick assessment by users that someone is in danger is very important. In toilets for those with disabilities, there is alarm pulls etc.

This is one of the most basic and fundamental issues for risk assessment. It is also the reason for keeping single sex provisions and gaps under doors.

The only council toilets I can think of having attendants are in London around Westminster. It’s too expensive.

Councils are under no obligation to provide toilets to the public. Most have disappeared due to the reasons your stories are about - sex and drugs (and vandalism). In seaside towns I you are more likely to have them.

‘I don't know who is supervising toilets, there was noone supervising them here’.
We all act as unofficial attendants to the other toilet users - if the design allows us to. Most people are good people. If you saw someone was on the floor of a toilet cubicle, or a struggle within it, you would raise the alarm. But you need to know someone is in trouble.

‘You can walk past closed cubicles and have no idea who is in there, might be someone like me, might be someone who needs money (perhaps another addict) waiting to rob me’.
Agree. You don’t even know how many people are in there. Privacy is a safety problem that’s why cubicles should rest in the open position and have door gaps. This also ensures you have an idea who is in the room with you, particularly when you exit.

‘It could be a man or a woman as noone is supervising who goes in there.’
Yes. This is a problem when it is mixed sex. I think many women would enter and quickly exit before using the female toilets if they were on their own and a man was in there, as good men stay out. This code, regulations and legislation and the Supreme Court verdict give women confidence in that choice.

‘I'm not saying it is perfect but using them I feel safer.’
It is extremely difficult to design safe public toilets. That’s why there is a specific section in the Sexual Offences Act about toilets and one reason cubicles have door gaps. What is of relevance to why your preference feels safe is you are not on your own when you are using these private toilet rooms. Your husband, someone you can trust, is there outside and he knows you are in there. They are in busy places. Two reasons the situation is safer for you.

Single sex toilet cubicles in a single sex environment are the only ones where the door and partitions can finish a max 15cm above floor level and where there can be space above the door and partitions. This is for ventilation, hygiene, supervision and prevention of misuse. These advantages are stated in many design documents.

Privacy overrides health and safety design advantages in mixed sex designs.

You, like me, have used accessible (disabled) toilets. They don’t have the advantages of door gaps either. I would like there to be additional accessible toilets within the single sex suite so that non ambulant people could be included. It would also help parents with pushchairs. That would free up the mixed sex accessible toilet for those that need that design. That should always be in a place that can be monitored as much as possible.

I hope someone from Bristol Council is looking at this thread and can see why designs matter for safeguarding. You can’t just stick a different pictogram over male or female toilets - a cubicle has to be leading out into a single sex environment. The design and location has to be thought out very carefully to serve the needs of more vulnerable users (lone women, children and the medically vulnerable). Recently in busy council offices it took six days before they realised someone had had a medical emergency in a toilet. That is very relevant to this thread. The cleaners thought the toilet was out of use.

Schools have discovered too late that mixed sex designs don’t work, hence a new market was established in expensive high-tech voice activated alarms specifically designed for their ‘gender-neutral’ private cubicles. It is thanks to a lot of hard work from many people interested in health and safety, that these designs are no longer allowed.

oh dear. You are making things up.

edit: replied to wrong post of yours. You’ve got several on the go but I don’t think you ever replied to mine last time.

If we are talking about numbers of toilet units there’s specific calculations. For the same number of women and men users, to achieve equality there should be twice as many female units as male units (male units count urinals and cubicles the same, though there must be a certain number of cubicles available).
If for any reason you had all universal designs, you would need 25% more toilet units than single sex cubicles in single sex washrooms. This is because of the extra time within the universal compartment as all the activity takes place inside that, lengthening the queues.

Of course, male people can enter female single sex provisions with warnings and announcements such as a sign put out as a warning.

Why is there this distraction about first aid responders 'having' to be single sex in a first responder situation in a leisure centre? Obviously, it would be an ideal, however, it seems to be being used as an argument for all mixed sex provision and it is a very weak one.

Yes I agree. Same for male cleaners and young boys in the womens toilets. It’s for reasons of health and safety.

It’s also common sense but the ‘whataboutery’ is not an excuse to make everything into mixed sex rooms which is the only solution otherwise.

@dizzydizzydizzy I have examples of deaths in non domestic toilets in the following places. Which location do you think deserves a design where you can instantly see someone is in trouble?
Council office, nightclub, school, pub, council public toilet, leisure centre, supermarket, work office, McDonald’s, gym, festival portaloo, general hospital, cardiac ward in hospital, psychiatric hospital, restaurant, shopping centre, train station, gp surgery….these are a few that I can remember off the top of my head. It’s a nightmare to collate it all as no one else does it. I know it’s one person every 5 to 6 months on average in a station toilet because British Transport Police do collect data.

Then there’s the list of toilet locations for sexual assaults which can be verified by court records for the women and children (and occasional men) that do report. It also shows how design matters and how incidents can be thwarted by other members of the public. I wrote a report in April about the evidence I have. Since then I know already add two more men that have been found guilty of attacking young women. There’s probably more but I haven’t searched as much recently.

Now of course some places only have room for one toilet so that’s got to be a universal design. But for other places, single sex cubicles leading on to single sex washrooms should be prioritised for health and safety.

I realise I am repeating myself and you are not prepared to listen to real evidence. But hopefully this thread with give Bristol City Council some information to reflect on if they really do want to reduce VAWG. Toilets and changing rooms are vulnerable places. With toilets, they are designed for health and safety and to mitigate men’s behaviour. There are laws, building control, regulation and legislation on toilets with that in mind. That’s a hell of a lot they are up against if they want to override who is allowed in single sex toilets.

Council office, nightclub, school, pub, council public toilet, leisure centre, supermarket, work office, McDonald’s, gym, festival portaloo, general hospital, cardiac ward in hospital, psychiatric hospital, restaurant, shopping centre, train station, gp surgery….these are a few that I can remember off the top of my head. It’s a nightmare to collate it all as no one else does it. I know it’s one person every 5 to 6 months on average in a station toilet because British Transport Police do collect data.

Thats horrendous @Keeptoiletssafe - I guess all these people on councils and in various roles merrily waving in unisex toilets would rather not know how many potentially avoidable deaths they’ve contributed to. It’s easier that way I guess.

To be fair those deaths are of a wide range of designs, however the vast majority of the ones I can identify the design from are private. A rarer example in single sex toilets was one person who had 3 overdoses over a period of a year - the 3rd time no one saw them until it was too late. The design had saved them twice previously. Those toilets have since closed down.

I know people have said this before, KTS, but just feel it bears repeating in the light of the above - you're amazing. Thank you so much for everything you do, and your careful explanations of it all on here. I recently shared with a doctor friend of mine the risks and benefits of the different door types you've described. It simply hadn't occurred to him - you could virtually hear the train of thought stopping in its tracks. So there's another someone out there now, with some influence, who's passing on your knowledge: it makes a difference. I just wish those with the power to really change things listened more often. I hope against hope that Bristol are reading, too.

Thank you that’s kind. I have been on hospital wards where doctors have that moment of clarity too. It seems such an obvious thing when you have ill people hidden away from the very people who can help!

Can I just say as well if the council are on here - I want everyone to be safe in toilets. But changing all provision to be completely private, so everything can be mixed sex, is not the solution. It is not inclusive of many vulnerable people.

You'd be talking about extending the partition walls to the ground whilst leaving the door gaps in situ to allow for a collapsed changer to be spotted. This will mean rotting partitions and an end to the "hose the floor down every night" cleaning regime that I often see as an evening swimmer, in return for voyeurs having to offend from within the open space instead of an adjacent cubicle or drill a hole in the partition wall.

The other option is rendered breezeblock walls, which also precludes hosing the floor. This costs a mint.

I guess the only variable might be whether it takes a couple of hours to notice a unit occupied for an abnormal amount of time in a busy location or whether it is only discovered by a cleaner when the building is closed after hours or whether it is a quiet corridor in a 24 hour building like a hospital where a cleaner will just skip and occupied room and only realise there is a problem days later. I think this extremely tragic situation has occurred already.

If you choke on vomit or your tongue and stop breathing, you don't have hours in which to be found, you have three minutes until irreversible brain damage starts occuring and not much longer before you die.

What is of relevance to why your preference feels safe is you are not on your own when you are using these private toilet rooms. Your husband, someone you can trust, is there outside and he knows you are in there. They are in busy places. Two reasons the situation is safer for you.

I have two points to add to this:

• What works well for a disabled woman out with her husband does not work for an able-bodied autistic woman who goes everywhere alone.
• Some women cannot trust their husbands, because those husbands are abusive. The single-sex public loo has, for a long time, been a place to advertise Rape Crisis and Women's Aid hotlines. In the days of mobile telephones, a single-sex loo is also a place where abused women can browse escape resources and call hotlines out of earshot of their abusers.

That used to be the case with maternity services as well, they'd get you to go to the loo with a sample container and a pen, and you could mark the bottom if you needed to talk to a midwife without your partner. I hope that's still the case, the risk of DV escalates during pregnancy.
The risks for women haven't changed but activists seem determined to remove the safety net.

Just to clarify I do go out without my husband so he isn't necessarily outside. My husband is disabled I think the days of him rushing to my defence are long gone. If I was attacked he would have a choice, attempt to get into the toilets on his mobility scooter, not easy and then what? Shout at the attacker, I could be dead already. Or get out of the scooter unclip his walking sticks and very slowly make his way in. If the attacker kept still he might be able to hit him with his sticks but the reality is more likely that he will give DH a shove and he will be in the floor unable to get up.

Your perception of risk and safety might be very different to mine.

As for us all being attendants if there is no one there they aren't attendants

Yes I understood your husband was in a mobility scooter. I have cared for non-ambulant people of both sexes and used the accessible toilet with both.

My views are not a perception. They are based on evidence. I read court records and other verified accounts by victims and police and establish the location and how and why deaths and crimes happen regarding design. I suppose I am a toilet detective. I have a 90+ page report of how toilet design is really important for health and safety outcomes, with information from academic journals, court reports, newspaper articles, coroners reports, manufacturers, British Standards, designers, architects, government consultations, microbiologists, toilet cleaners, FOIs about data, rape statistics, spike crimes, etc etc. I have pages of real life data.

I have always been led by design then how that changes the outcome to various demographics. For an example, in my database, an old woman would be more likely to be vulnerable in an enclosed toilet due to having a stroke than being attacked. Because of the data I have collected. But always having someone to look out for you can be preventative in lots of ways.

”As for us all being attendants if there is no one there they aren't attendants”
The threat of someone seeing you carrying out a crime can also be preventative. Would there be so many members of the mile-high club if plane toilets weren’t (by space restrictions) mixed sex and private? What is it about the private, mixed sex disabled toilets that meant they had to have a radar key and not single sex toilets?

There’s a good book about world sanitation that someone on here recommended. There’s a phrase that I like to quote because I think it’s really important to note how non domestic toilets are used the world over:

‘Anthropologists and sociologists should be infesting public toilets. There’s nothing else in human society quite like them. Not in society, not quite out of it. Needed but rarely demanded. A place where all sorts of human needs and habitats intersect: fear, disgust, conversation, grooming, sex. It’s an ambiguous space that is not quite in the public eye, though the public uses it. A place of refuge and sociability: of necessity and criminality.’ Rose George, ‘The Big Necessity’ (2008)

The major difference from 2008 is the demanding! Toilets have never been this much in the news. When I started researching designs and how more and more were unregulated and unsafe designs a few ago no one seemed interested.

This next bit you won’t like but it’s objective too. When I looked at why there was a recommendation to the U.K. government that designs of toilets were enclosed for people with long term health conditions, I worked it all the way back to the singular ‘literature’ ‘evidence’ reason, in a report commissioned by the government to look at this demographic. That literature evidence was not from the U.K., nor for people with long term health conditions. It wasn’t based on health and safety. Nor risk assessments. I worked it all the way back to this sentence in an American opinion article: A better solution, supported by many trans activists, and increasingly found in trendy urban nightclubs and restaurants, is to eliminate gender-segregated facilities entirely and treat the public restroom as one single open space with fully enclosed stalls.

So let’s think why fully enclosed stalls would be a good idea for people with long term health conditions. Why did that report to government suggest that would be a good design for people with heart conditions, endometriosis, epilepsy, diabetes, strokes, mental health issues, drug problems etc? Well it didn’t. It didn’t mention any of these long term conditions except a handrail for people who have had strokes. They have dismissed millions of people by not looking at their needs. What is did mention was urinal heights for non binary users, periods only in the context of transmen and the company got a Stonewall award the next year. I am saying this to show that there was bias in that report and they didn’t fulfil their brief.

Going back to that nightclub sentence, surely it’s the owners choosing the design of the toilets in these trendy nightclubs? You could be cynical and say actually why do we think it’s less hassle or attractive for the trendy nightclubs to hide everyone in individual cubicles? This is relevant because it’s illegal to do lots of activities in toilets in this country and my data shows there are indeed a lot of horrendous things that happen in nightclub toilets. Designing-in crime. Health and safety wise, would reverting to make the toilet cubicles less private and in a single sex environment make the bad things less likely to happen? Yes it would and I know that from the coroners, police and court reports.

Now let’s look at the evidence for the Document T consultation for safety. I was interested in this obviously. The consultation response showed overwhelmingly that the safety of trans people was the biggest concern respondent's had. A corresponding percentage also wanted everyone to have access to every cubicle (this immediately makes the design private). So I looked into the reasons why. Could the increase in privacy in design for anyone at their most vulnerable in the cubicle be justified? What was happening? There were thousands of responses to this consultation and the majority mentioned a Stonewall report. So I looked into that specific report. The points for ‘bathrooms’ were that 48% felt uncomfortable in public toilets - it’s implied that’s this is going into the wrong toilet for their sex (other similar surveys say that 80% of the public in general feel uncomfortable but it’s not like for like). The worst example with more details was a man who was shouted at for being in the wrong toilets then pushed out by two women when he wouldn’t leave. This was noted as verbal and physical abuse. I can imagine it was distressing. I can’t find out anything else about this incident or any others that can be verified by any court records etc.

Stonewall has every right to rally supporters to write into the consultation. Supporters have every right to highlight the incidents of going into the wrong sex toilets and to advocate and argue that they should be allowed to go in them. But what has happened is that has squashed the reality of who actually is at risk. The very designs that are being promoted by a coordinated group puts everyone, at their most vulnerable, at risk. It’s also misguided. I have found that ironically so called ‘inclusive’ designs are least bad for healthy men.

I have documents from 40 years ago stating it’s advantageous for gaps under and over the partitions and doors for ventilation, cleaning, supervision and prevention of misuse. My research agrees with that. Door gaps are not compatible with mixed sex design. Mixed sex design is smellier, less clean, can’t be supervised as well and has a greater capacity to be misused.

If the ‘transactivists’ had said we want toilets with door gaps I wouldn’t be campaigning. Everyone else would though! Most people are prepared to put up with a small lack of privacy for the known advantages of health and safety. There is an immediate visceral reaction to toilet door gaps in a mixed sex space.

I would actually really like to stop going on about toilets. However when councils imply they are going to ignore design regulations or spend a load of money creating unisex provision for everyone, then I feel I have a duty to say that is wrong for all the victims in the past. It’s for the ones that could have been prevented. It’s for the ones that will be prevented in the future if people take on board what I am campaigning for. That’s not a perception, it’s fact-based.

If the following post was too long (I don’t blame you) the recent die-in protests on the pavement remind me of my campaign picture. The design on the left is only permitted in a single sex environment. If there were no single sex spaces in front of toilet cubicles, this design would be obsolete. I am campaigning for safe toilet design.

Quite. I think it would be helpful if we are able to counter the frequently repeated but false claim that unisex toilets and changing are generally preferred by organisations because they are cheaper to run by some vague waving at ‘economies of scale’ or something.

This is usually used to end a discussion on single sex provision as we see declining standard across society, cost is ever more important. And who could possibly expect organisations to ignore cost in favour of safety for women and children? (Sarcasm).

I am ever more astounded that so many people in charge of budgets and public facilities have lost their minds to the extent that they will choose the more expensive and dangerous (in several ways) option at the behest of the trans lobby.

It appears to be an abuse of the concept of ‘received knowledge’ where enough people repeat a vaguely plausible ‘fact’ often enough that others parrot it without thought and it becomes widely accepted as ‘fact’, even though it’s not true.

I pointed out to school head teacher that only providing the design on the right (as a mixed sex facility) was a safety risk to the student I knew of who was prone to fits and collapsing and she dismissed that as a concern.

I hate the inhumanity that has been indoctrinated into some people with responsibility for the safety of the vulnerable.

Thank you for this. I have had several parents contact me about their children who have medical conditions and how scared they are about school toilets. In an average secondary school you will have around a dozen pupils that have ambulant medical conditions where they are more prone to collapse (seizures, hypos, allergic reactions, other heart and neurological conditions).

There is a statutory duty for the school to support children with medical conditions and some of these conditions will be classed as disabilities so then there’s the reasonable adjustments to provision under the Equality Act. It needs to be challenged. It is not inclusive to the most vulnerable pupils.

Do you normally tell people who have a different opinion to you they are not prepared to listen? You are entitled to your opinion but so am I. We are talking policy here, not scientific fact.