Who do I send this to? I need to tidy this up but I am fed up of people, who are ignorant of real life situations, creating dangerous policies. My main concern has been medically vulnerable people - hospitals should be the last places with completely private toilets.
Equality Impact Assessments for Disabled people (and those with long term health conditions)
This Policy will be detrimental to people who are disabled. It may cause fear, harm and death. This is due the the design of ‘gender neutral’ or ‘mixed sex’ toilets which are designed to have no visibility gaps and are acoustically sound. Although everyone can suffer a medical emergency which causes death in a toilet, it is more reasonable to conclude it is more likely to be those with pre-existing health conditions.
If you feel nauseous or ill you are likely to head to the toilet. If you collapse, you are more likely to survive, or avoid suffering long-term damage, if someone notices and rescues you.
There are known medical reasons for a disproportionally high frequency of cardiac arrests and strokes while an individual is in the toilet room. There are no UK statistics that list where people collapse. However, it is known there are around 100,000 hospital admissions due to heart attacks in this country, equating to one every five minutes. It is estimated there are 400,000 people in the U.K. with undiagnosed heart failure. There are also around 100,000 strokes in this country, equating to one every five minutes. Around 1% of people in this country have epilepsy and around 80 people are diagnosed with epilepsy each day. There are many other conditions that lead to collapse where you need to be noticed and accessed quickly eg. diabetes and asthma.
Certain disabled groups, to be safe from harm need the standard safety gaps traditionally found in single sex toilet blocks. This is particularly important in public and office toilets where people may be without family/friends/carers.
There are over 55 million people with epilepsy in the world. Roughly 1% in this country. Epilepsy is classed as a disability under the Equality Act. It is an unacceptable risk as successful resuscitation relies on quick rescue times. The brain will start being damaged four minutes after a lack of oxygen. Being able to be seen by having a floor to door gap does save people’s lives.
Staff, such as those with epilepsy, may be considered disabled under the definition set out in the Equality Act 2010, and governing bodies must comply with their duties under that Act to place reasonable adjustments to keep them safe.
Equality Impact Assessment on Age
Older people will disproportionately suffer due to the greater risks of collapsing inside a privately designed cubicle and not being seen.
Equality Impact Assessment on Sex
There is a substantial detriment to girls and women in reducing or eliminating the number toilets that have visibility gaps and you are unable to be heard from. This is due to the fact that women are most likely to suffer from sexual assaults. The gap enables the occupant to pre-assess danger and allows others outside the cubicle to witness a crime. The latter point prevents assaults as perpetrators prefer privacy. Furthermore ‘gender neutral’ designs have a safety mechanism to allow the door to be open outwards from the outside (to enable people to retrieve a body) so a perpetrator can let themselves in. There has been no safety assessment done on the difference in the assault rates inside toilets. There has however been studies on the volume of assaults in schools and hospitals which shows that most are taken in areas accessible to most sexes and private.
Equality Impact Assessment on Religion
This may affect some Islamic, Hindu, and Orthodox Jewish women. (I am unaware of any studies)
I have a lack of data on sexual assaults and type of toilet design. There needs a study to be done urgently. There are lots of examples of rapes in train carriage toilets, in disabled toilets and (historically) store cupboards in schools. These are all places that favour a perpetrator. In Everyone’s Invited there’s accounts of assaults in school disabled toilets. There are many mumsnetters who have told me pupils are having sex in new design toilets at schools. I have police area records of the number of rapes in public toilets and in schools. Hundreds per year reported. And accounts of women being spiked then followed into toilets where they are assaulted. Bars and nightclubs with new style private toilets are prime for this. And the investigation of the assaults in hospitals by the WRN and assaults in schools by the BBC.
More private toilets in a public spaces, where both sexes can be without question, that can be opened from the outside and once inside no one can see or hear you. What could the impact be 😡?