I will tell you exactly and truthfully why I post.
Because of the experiences I have gone through, I was trying to keep toilets safe so fewer people are harmed by not being attended to quickly enough if they collapse in a toilet.
I wrote at length to a government consultation on toilets and months later, in the analysis published, my comments and concerns and those of a charity that I knew had written in, were ignored. So I looked and found a consultation document from a company that had been employed to advise government on design for people with long term health conditions and they had recommended fully enclosed toilets. I read all the references in their report and the relevant one to enclose toilets is a paper from American transactivists. I read the work of the transactivists which has a lot of phallic imagery and was influenced a lot by the male gaze in public toilets in terms of cruising. It had nothing to do with the focusing on the practical design safety for people with long term health conditions. I watched YouTube videos by the architect who discussed last year his life’s work to Harvard students and how he has not analysed the designs. A safety analysis, to my knowledge, has still not been done.
Back to the company’s consultation to the government. Rather than even mention most of the common long term health conditions (their remit) the report discussed such things as the correct urinal heights for non-binary people and rather than endometriosis for example, which can cause collapse in toilets, periods were only referenced at the back in terms of sanitary bins for transmen. There was no mention of cardiac arrests which are more likely to happen in toilets and need a quick response. I looked into the company and found they had been awarded a Stonewall Gold Award.
I then looked at the analysis results. There was a Stonewall report that was mentioned thousands of times in the majority of the total replies to the government. This skewed the data to the point that the results ‘showed’ only 2% of people supported disabled (accessible) toilets. I looked and found Stonewall had put a campaign together that said to write in to promote gender-neutral toilets (which are enclosed) and a specific report of theirs. I looked at this Stonewall report which had a section on discrimination in facilities. There was one account of a trans person being pushed by 2 women when shouting didn’t work to get them out of the toilet. They were two other mentions of people telling people to get out of the facilities. This was called verbal abuse so I don’t know what words were used. Of course this will be upsetting for everyone.
This is contrast with me demonstrating how a door gap has saved lives and its role in preventing assaults, neither of which were mentioned in the government report.
According to that Stonewall report 48% of the 733 trans people surveyed, don’t feel uncomfortable using public toilets. So I looked to see how many people feel uncomfortable using public toilets. According to a poll of 2000 British people, done by Bloo, 80% Brits would only venture into a public toilet if it was completely unavoidable.
Along the way, I tried to find other statistics about what happened in toilets and the huge amount of sexual assaults that happen in toilets and other completely private spaces in public areas became apparent. I made the link between privacy and risk of attack because of the patterns I saw with unisex toilets and that one woman on video pleading with officials at her child’s school, nicknaming them rape cubicles.
I focused a lot on schools due to my experience and the fact there was lots of data coming out of schools as some schools had designed all their toilets to be fully enclosed and mixed sex. It quickly came apparent that this leads all the problems I thought it would, and discriminates against those pupils with long term health conditions and girls. One thing I have had a running discussion with the Department of Education is that they don’t hold an equality and impact statement for their guidance on toilet designs, which are all ‘for privacy’ now (5mm from floor to door). This is despite at least a dozen pupils in an average school having conditions such as epilepsy and diabetes. There are children that have had seizures in school due to illness and smoking spiked vapes. There are defibrillators in every school but the common place where pupils go when they feel ill is hidden from view. The ‘gender-neutral’ design affects vulnerable people more. It is the very opposite of inclusive. I have noticed the last deaths in uk school toilets have all been in cubicles with private design.
This is not a conspiracy. All of it was from following the trail from that government toilet consultation. It’s still all on-line if you want to check.
In the final Document T you will also see door gaps aren’t mentioned in the single sex toilets designs (C and D). The universal designs (A and B) have to be fully private and can be used as single sex designs too.
I have corresponded with the HSE/BSR and they say single sex toilets can have door gaps they are just not mentioned. It used to say in the documents leading to BS6465 (which is where Doc T originated from) there should be a floor to door gap of not more than 150mm for supervision, cleaning, ventilation and prevention of wilful misuse and a gap above the door to the ceiling. From my research I think the focus had been on enclosing all toilets because of the push to make toilets open to both sexes and that this reduces the threat of voyeurism. However technology has moved on and now the greater threat of voyeurism is from hidden cameras. Private toilets offer the design that enables the set up of these tiny hidden cameras without anyone suspecting. Because of all the extra gadgets you have to have in a unisex toilet (extra mechanical ventilation, sink, dryer, hopefully a fire alarm) I think the hidden cameras are more difficult to spot.
The best designed toilets are the safest and healthiest. They should be as simply designed as possible with gaps above and under the doors and partitions. The floor to door gap should be 150mm to allow people to recognise threats to occupant safety. They should ideally have gaps above a standard door to the ceiling to enable air circulation. They should be single sex and have a single sex area in front which commonly has the sinks in. The door should rest in the open position. There should be an ambulant design following the above principal and the option of an accessible (disabled) toilet within single sex toilets too. This extra space toilet would also be useful for mothers with buggies/small children of either sex, and give disabled people the advantages of single sex design, so that if they collapse they don’t have to rely on being conscious enough to pull a cord which is often not reachable/non-existent/not working. It is also a preventative measure for possible assaults.
Any private toilet, especially if it’s unisex, should be monitored extra carefully. The numbers of unisex toilets should be reduced as much as possible. In Document T is does makes allowances for this, for example in a cafe where there’s one toilet as it would be more noticeable if something was wrong inside. All toilets need to be openable from the outside, even if the person has locked themselves in, for safety reasons. The measure of a civilised society is how it treats its vulnerable.
The Good Law Project has got hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations to argue for more dangerous toilets designs for us all. As soon as the area in front of toilet cubicles is mixed sex, the cubicle housing the toilets are private. From my research, the people that are least at risk from physical harm due to these designs, the designs the Good Law Project will have to argue for, are healthy, heterosexual, adult men.
Now I doubt you’ll read all that and you have never responded but you may scroll down to the last sentence so…
The Supreme Court ruling allows the safest and healthiest designs to be at the forefront again.