Toilets query

[Shells]

I'm hoping the hive mind will help me untangle this argument at work. I know there is a toilet specialist! We have two self contained and lockable rooms. Previously labelled m and f. The male room has a washbasin, toilet in a cubicle and urinal. The female has a wash basin and toilet and also doubles as disabled. We've had requests to make the toilets gender neutral, but also requests from some women requesting to keep the female toilet. So we compromised by keeping the f but making the m unisex. We're a heavily female workforce so that one is much less used anyway. There has now been a complaint that a) we're discriminating against men as they don't have their own toilet and b) trans identified people won't find the previously male toilet neutral because of the urinal. Sigh. Any thoughts on legal position here?

Your business needs to renovate the ex male toilet to remove the urinal and put in the bars supports for men with disabilities.
Once done there is one male unit and one female unit.

I think the toilet specialist you’re looking for is @Keeptoiletssafe

But also, I think you could look at the advice from Sex Matters:

https://sex-matters.org/posts/publications/workplace-toilets-know-your-rights/

IANAL, but I think your male employees are correct - if you have female-only toilets you must have male-only toilets. You need to provide a third set of toilets if you want to provide for mixed-sex, or you need to make all your toilets mixed-sex. BUT there are also regulations on the actual physical makeup of a mixed-sex toilet - it needs extra privacy, so just slapping a mixed-sex sign on a previously single-sex toilet will also probably not cut it.

Sorry! Prob not what you wanted to hear. Technically I believe you do not have to provide mixed-sex toilets, and until you can do so safely (ie following regulations) I suspect legally you are better advised to stick to single sex.

Oops, missed that they are fully enclosed, single person units. In which case I think they can be classified as mixed-sex with no further physical changes.

But you def can’t have one be mixed and one be female. Both mixed or male and female.

Hello!

this is the document you could refer to. I would have a look at this. If there’s a big refurbishment or change ‘in material use’ you have to comply with it - I am not sure your situation would count, but it does point to single sex toilets being the ones that should come first. Because they are of a ‘universal’ type of design it’s a grey area if they are multi-use. I do think men should also have their own loos too.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67167c02d100972c0f4c9b38/ADT_2024.pdf

Thanks all. We are only renting for another 8 months or so there so no budget to renovate sadly. I would rather stick with M and F, but the regs do say that Trans people need an option. So it looks like we need to go both unisex?

Popping back in quickly to say that if your women’s toilets are also the disabled toilets, then technically they are already mixed-sex, so then I think you’d need to make the men’s mixed as well.

Ideally they should both be accessible - one M/accessible, one F/accessible, but I realise you have no budget for renovation.

Unlike others, I don't think it would be unfair to make the men's toilet mixed sex because the female toilet is the only one which is accessible and there is only one toilet in the room, whereas the male toilet has a cubicle and a urinal so that two men can use it at once. But you can't really sensibly categorise the male toilet as unisex and the female toilet as women + anyone with a disability
So both should be designated unisex.

No. The regs say that trans people are to use the toilet for their biological sex.

Apologies for the short reply earlier - was rushing. I think a lot of places are now scratching their heads thinking what to do.

The toilet manufacturers will be busy.

Obviously the situation you had before seemed to work. I think the only one now is to put unisex on both unfortunately because by making one disabled, as someone else said, it is unisex by default. Unless it isn’t really a disabled toilet (just a bit bigger) as there are specific rules for disabled toilets. It you can argue that, I would stick a female and a male sign on.

If you are in the UK the law say for discrimination cases people of the same sex are the benchmark.

Female humans with a PC of GR are women/female for toilet provision. So the benchmark would be based on the law for female staff so eg a lack of sanitary bins would be actionable but a urinal in the space would not be.

Male humans with a PC of GR are male and so toilet provision would be based male provision so eg having no transfer bars/space in the toilet for men would be actionable but only if you currently employ a male who needs them ( or refuse to hire such a man in the next [(edit) 6] 8 months)

I'm quite keen to refuse to hire a man ;).

@Shells your employer's are already discriminating against women and potentially disabled people by having the only accessible toilet double up as the women's instead of being a separate facility or also making the male toilet an accessible toilet.
I know that this may seem counter intuitive but hear me out. If a male person is disabled and requires the use of the accessible facilities he has no choice but to use the female/accessible facility as its the only accessible facilities so it's no longer a single sex space but a mixed sex space whilst the men have the sole use of the male facilities and the mixed sex facilities as such there are no facilities that men can't use. It doesn't matter that they are single use spaces because women are excluded from 1 of the 2 toilets and shared use of the other, but men have use of both, 1 exclusively and the other shared, so it's automatically sex discrimination.
The only way to fix this for your work is to make the men's facilities accessible aswell as the women's and stick to a strict single sex usage (no transwomen in the women's) or build a 3rd non accessible women's only space. If however your employer just makes both facilities mixed sex they could leave themselves open to claims of breaching the H&S 1992 work place act by not having single sex facilities when they have the room and indirect sex discrimination for not having female only facilities (though I'm not certain that would be an easy win).
So quickest and cheapest fix is to remove the urinal from the men's so there's room for it to be made accessible and strictly enforcing the no men however they id in the women's and they look like a truly inclusive employer by doubling the number of accessible facilities 😁

They have an option - the correct one for the unchanging sex that they and everyone else knows they are of.

The regs do not say anything about trans people. The H&S regs have stipulated numbers for men and women, that's it.

This is the bit of the guidance I was thinking we needed to reference: Hello,

• however where facilities are available to both men and women, trans people should not be put in a position where there are no facilities for them to use

Do you have any trans people who are not male or female, not men or women?

https://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-safety/workplace-facilities/health-safety.htm

How many employees do you have? How many are male? How many are female?

Where is that sources from?

Its very simple the business has 2 units if the employee is old enough to be in employment (without a minder) they are old enough to work out which sex they are.

If your work has a male objecting to the urinal in the same space as a toilet you or your management just need to smile and say nothing.

And FYI if you are an active poster on MN you may be traceable so that other post could be used as evidence in a sex discrimination case.

I cant see a problem with making both "unisex", especially if people know what they contain. You could legally have them both open to anyone (which actually is good if one is being used when a woman needs to pee anyway) but in practice a man would know which contains the urinal and is therefore meant for him.

My understanding is that this is for the situation where a transman (biological women with male appearance) has been excluded from the women’s toilet because their presentation might cause particular alarm (eg toilets in rape crisis centre). (Mention is included in the guidance). So if they can’t go to the women’s and they mustn’t go to the men’s, they do need somewhere to go. I imagine this would only be in a handful of places, as generally it is utterly unproblematic for transmen to use facilities appropriate to their sex.

No. By law employers must provide toilets for each sex - the number is dependent on how many employees there are. Link is above.

Anything else would need to be in addition.

Thank you @InsertUsernameHere - that's really helpful and what i needed. Thanks to all who contributed.

Do you actually have any trans people using the toilets?

Based on what you have said you need to have two mixed sex, fine to include a urinal too.