The 3 options for toilets:
Legislation and Building Regulations are based upon health, safety and welfare. It was inconceivable at the time of their implementation, that barristers would now be arguing people had rights to use the toilets for the opposite sex.
Single sex toilets and mixed sex toilets are not the same designs. If you go for a ‘case by case’ basis, you are left with only 2 options.
Government now needs to make a choice out of 3:
- Both sexes are allowed in a toilet cubicle or toilet room, so the design of each has to be rebuilt to a mixed sex design. This means scrapping single sex provision, variations of which are most of the toilet provision in the country. Designs C and D in Document T (2024) are no more. This is huge in economic terms. You have to have separate rooms, fully private and sound resistant, with sinks, mirrors, and a hand drying system inside. There may be less provision overall due to space and the fact it takes longer in occupant turnover. On the plus side, women exclude from these designs, so men won’t have to wait as long.
- Both sexes are allowed in all toilets but to keep provision as it is and ‘just’ change Health and Safety legislation and Building Regulation on toilets. Risk assessments would have to be ignored as currently mixed sex designs are completely private to prevent voyeurism. What to do about urinals? Parts of the Sexual Offences Act (2003) would also need to be looked at carefully as they may be unworkable in their current form.
- Keep single sex provision the main provision, as in Document T. Even though I have proof of Stonewall skewing the analysis and consultation, this was still the verdict reached in 2024. Although Document T now doesn’t specifically mention door gaps, HSE confirms they can have them. There’s a long story involving transactivists about that. HSE confirms Universal designs can not have door gaps.
Why abolish safer single sex designs which can have door gaps for:
health (ventilation & easier cleaning, so less pathogens)
safety (supervision in case of medical emergencies and assaults)
prevention of misuse (inc vandalism, sex and drugs)?
Indeed at the time of The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, the relevant Building Regulations for toilets BS6465 (1984 version), were stating that ‘….where a range of WCs is provided, each in a separate cubicle within a single room, e.g. in schools, offices, factories, public buildings and public conveniences, it simplifies ventilation, cleaning and, to some extent, supervision and prevention of wilful misuse, if the cubicle walls terminate above the floor as well as below the ceiling. These advantages are gained only at the expense of a certain degree of privacy. Where cubicles are used, the whole room in which they are situated may be regarded as a single unit for the purposes of ventilation.
Where partition walls and doors of WC cubicles are kept clear of the floor, the clearance should be not less than 100 mm and not more than 150 mm. Partitions and doors that terminate below ceiling level should be not less than 2 m in height from the floor.’
Based on my research, there’s a case that Option 1 is detrimental to sex (assaults on women, collapse due to endometriosis/pregnancy), disabilities (epilepsy, diabetes, heart conditions due to collapse risks esp. cardiac arrest where 11% happen on the toilet), religion (exclude those who do not use mixed sex facilities), age (frailty and collapse eg stroke risk in elderly; assaults on children) and pregnancy (risks of miscarriage/ collapse). The demographic it is least dangerous for is a healthy man.
Option 2 is most favoured by men that want to use the women’s toilets. They are less likely to prefer mixed sex design.
Which option will the Government choose?