Is this what a sane but pro-Trans response to the EHRC Guidance looks like?

Not in any way blaming OP(!) but seriously this is a / the church writing a whole document that at no point acknowledges women might have rights.

Yes of course guidance is need to help churches, facilities comply with the law, but throughout no acknowledgement anywhere about why women need single sex services.

That is what the guidance is about as much as pandering to the tiny minority (under the law around 10,000 people as non binary, gender fluid people are not part of this). Not surprising given who they have consulted.

Just so disturbing that even a church can not acknowledge that what is happening now is rectifying the terrible abuse and loss of women' rights that has been happening.

I just got angrier and angrier reading it as it was all about trans rights nothing about women's rights.

All the groups listed at the end are all about trans rights.

Not even one reference to a women's rights groups that they could consult to ensure that women's rights aren't abused.

Sorry OP to be so negative, but what are we are women reduced to that we have to think this is the best we can expect.

This is basically what my workplace has done for our semi-public meeting rooms.

All the other toilets have remained the same single sex as before, but the meeting rooms have a little vestibule before the meeting room with most having two single room toilets (the others have disabled toilets) all having sinks and everything within. Since the vast majority of the people who use the meeting rooms are women, we've had situation where women are waiting for one toilet while the other went unused. They've all been turned into unisex toilets with single sex toilets down the hall.

And having regularly checked the rooms and toilets after their use (cleaning staff cannot go in until they've been checked that all private documents have been removed, and yes people leave random stuff in the toilets so yes, I checked what was the male toilet), I've not seen much difference in how they're left when they were single sex vs being unisex.

Toilet gaps save lives. When you are ill, you go to a toilet. That is a common place for someone to need emergency help, and you can't know that if they're locked behind a floor to ceiling door.

Emergency cords and buttons are far, far safer than just expecting someone to come by and see you in a gap under the door.

A lot of public toilets are put in the most out of the way leftover space, and I've more than once been made very aware that if I had another fall while I was in the toilets, that it could be ages until I was found by anyone.

So what if it's a set of proposals for churches @RareGoalsVerge ? That's barely mentioned in the OP. Is it not possible to expand the discussion to the principle of single-/mixed-sex facilities in general, as most posters appear to be doing anyway?

What this proposal boils down to - in relation to toilets, the document covers other things too, e.g. church women's groups or men's groups - is that both single-sex and mixed-sex loos should be provided if possible. If a church (or any service provider) has floor-to-ceiling doors on their loos then the toilets provided should be unisex. The preference of the authors of the proposal seems to be to go for unisex facilities. That opens up a can of worms, as discussed above. As for having both single-sex and mixed-sex facilities, this is not possible in all circumstances or for all spaces (how would it work for hospital wards, for example, or in sporting competitions?).

In any case, this isn't a "sane" response that is trying to compromise. They are being forced to come up with this "advice" because they now have to comply with the law. This isn't even their own proposal - it's lifted from the EHRC guidance (see section 13.120 onwards and section 13.140). Am I meant to feel grateful that some people have finally realised that the law needs to be complied with and can't simply be ignored? They are still prioritising the part of the law that allows service providers not to provide single-sex facilities.

Yes, I think this document is a very welcome change. The "just ignore the EHRC" approach we usually see is a total legal dead end for organisations. It leaves churches exposed to massive liability because defiance isn't a real legal strategy.

What makes this document refreshing is that it actually engages with the reality of compliance. It accepts that providers need clear, actionable rules on what they must build and manage. By decoupling provider obligations from individual cubicle policing, it actually offers a practical framework instead of just screaming into the void. It’s flawed, as you rightly noted, but it’s a much more mature response than the usual blanket defiance.

I have a strong dislike for unisex facilities. In single-sex spaces, I only had to manage occasional messes caused by some women and children. However, in unisex facilities, I have to contend with male use on top. The unisex cubicles at M&S are consistently unpleasant. Each time I visit, I find the toilet seat soiled with urine. As women, we often have to clean it up before we can use the facility ourselves or help our children. It feels like we are acting as free cleaners, and I'm sure M&S appreciates this setup.

But TW don't want a plethora of options. It's not about access to the toilets. It's about access to the women who use the toilets.

Stonewall has had income of close to £100million over the last 10 years. That could have financed a LOT of toilets, if that was what TW wanted.

I think this proposal is a load of nonsense. How can a woman feel safe if all loos are mixed-sex? A woman in a pub on a Friday night will have to use the same toilet facilities as men. What happens if there is only woman wanting to use the loos and the only other people waiting in there are a group of men who've had a few pints?

This proposal also contradicts the idea that transwomen are too scared to use the same toilets as other men. If they can use the same toilets as men with mixed-sex facilities then surely they can use the same toilets as other men in single-sex male toilet facilities.

And the Equality Act and accompanying EHRC guidance are not just about toilets. What about changing rooms and hospital wards and rape crisis centres?

A unisex facility needs to be positioned to lead out onto a thoroughfare for safety reasons. Like the accessible does.

I am in hospital today so typical there’s so many toilet threads. Happy to report the ladies is the standard regulated cubicle inside a separate sex washroom. Good floor-door and floor-partition gappage of 15cm. Well ventilated and clean. Space above the door and partitions. Two hooks at correct height. Bonus for obscure glazed window in washroom for natural light and ventilation! No smells. I was in there on my own and I know that because the cubicle doors were ajar. All thought out and within regulations.

This is a screenshot of building regs highlighted in document T.
You have to make sure women and men are provided for first. Then add unisex.

This is the document if the screenshot didn’t come out well
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6901feb971b575684c3cf7c4/ADT_2024_rev16Jun25.pdf
“The Building Regulations can be contravened by not following the correct procedures or not meeting the technical performance requirements. If the building owner or those responsible for the works contravene the Building Regulations, the local authority may prosecute them in the magistrates’ court.”

You may see in Approved Document T that it does not mention door gaps! I have it confirmed they can be there in single sex designs C and D they are just not mentioned. In a lot of the text you can see it’s implied but HSE said they were trying to keep the document manageable and short for general readership. Which is why my campaign started to show the importance. I want to get the advantages stated in them and put as an option in the cross section diagrams. This is the document most people will look at. I have spoken to the Health and Safety Executive and the Building Safety Regulator who confirmed the dimensions in British Standards BS6465 are correct.

British Standards BS6465 has 4 parts that cost ££££ and go in to a lot of technical detail including calculations for men v women’s toilets, positioning of hooks, circulation space, widths, heights etc. It’s many pages long. I have parts of it. That’s where my ‘ventilation, cleaning, prevention of misuse and supervision’ comes from when I talk about the advantages of not having fully enclosed toilet compartments. Approved Document T is based on BS6465.

This is why I roll my eyes when people think they know better. A lot of people have spent a lot of time over decades refining all of these documents, based on the biological needs of men and women. Nothing makes sense in these documents if ‘women’ doesn’t mean biological women and ‘men’ doesn’t mean biological men.

You might not have an issue with unisex facilities during the day, and in a workplace in which people know each other, but can you imagine being a lone woman in a mixed sex facility in the night time economy when there are several men in there with you?

The worst seat-piss I’ve encountered have been a couple of occasions when I foolishly used a cubicle in the women’s loos just vacated by a boy evidently young enough that his mum didn’t want him going alone into the gents (in naice NT sort of places) but old enough (they looked about 10 to me) she trusted him to use a separate cubicle to her. I shudder to think what mixed sex primary school loos must be like.

As for changing rooms, it is just so obvious that they must be single sex, that it's not even worth entertaining any alternative

Keeptoiletssafe says it best, but until she gets here:

1. Toilet gaps save lives. When you are ill, you go to a toilet. That is a common place for someone to need emergency help, and you can't know that if they're locked behind a floor to ceiling door.
2. Women vastly prefer being able to wash their hands away from men if they're on their period.
3. Urinals are great for men. They are quicker and cleaner than a seated loo. Having no cubicle doors is more hygienic as there are fewer touch points - he walks in, wees, washes hands, leaves.

It is a system that works. Men who identify as trans can still use a urinal, or a cubicle in the men's. They are not being discriminated against, they have the same provision as all other men.

Thank you! Does that include where all the cubicles are completely self contained with sink etc?

The law states which facilities people cannot use i.e. opposite sex ones. It doesn't force anyone to use single sex facilities. If a trans-identified person chooses to use a gender neutral alternative I can't see what the issue is, as long as single sex facilities are not removed and replaced entirely with mixed sex ones.

I have never seen the amount of piss-on-seat in a women's toilet that I have experienced on following a man into a mixed-sex toilet.

Exactly. Can you imagine the plethora of options which could have been available now if, instead of determinedly trying to erase women's legal right to single sex spaces and services, the TRA organisations had focused on actually expanding toilet facility provisions?

I mean, women had to fight for all these services. They could have done the same. They chose not to. And now we're being told we have to come up with a 'kind' solution.

No.

Not your mums. Not your support humans.

And in the meantime, this image (which I believe is from KTS) is a good example

They have to provide separate male and female first and then, if there is space, they can add a mixed sex facility. But the mixed sex can't replace the separate male and female.

I appreciate the effort to put forward a good faith solution that takes account of many of the reasons women need SSS.

I don’t have a problem with unisex loos at all. I’m constantly wiping up other women’s piss from toilet seats (why the hoverers can’t wipe up after themselves I’ll never know). And I hate, hate, hate door and floor gaps - makes cubicles near-unusable for me. Much prefer floor to ceiling walls and doors.

I have not heard of any problems from the men I associate with but then I guess they might not necessarily mention it to me. I'm guessing they have seen transwomen in the gents, just as we've seen them in the ladies.

I thought that where space allowed, an employer still needs to provide single sex facilities (because it’s health and safety law) and can’t just make everything self contained cubicles?

Yet another thread on this. If all toilets are made unisex, women lose out for the reasons repeated hundreds of times on this board. If extra unisex toilets are created, fine, but who pays for this? How about the trans organisations do some fundraising for it, instead of fundraising to attack womens' rights?

Paging @KeepToiletsSafe for her excellent safety-based takedown of single-occupant loos.

tl;dr: The gap between door and floor saves lives.