Hi @SingleSexSpacesInSchools
just seen your updates on GLP.
I don’t know if you know the GLPs position on Keeping Children Safe in Education. I may have had a moan about it on one or two threads today, particularly his pompous dismissal of accessible toilets.
so I copied a relevant part of my post here:
Gender neutral has no regulated design - it’s not a term used in legislation or regulation. It made a brief appearance for a few years in Department of Education design guidelines and this year has disappeared! No mention of gender in design. It was daft - the guidance had a unisex toilet by reception and a recommendation for a gender neutral toilet on every floor.
A unisex toilet follows the universal design. It is private and resistant to sound. Toilet facilities provided in a fully enclosed room which contains a water-closet and washbasin and hand-drying facilities, and is intended for individual use by persons of either sex. It is the design required by the 1992 Health and Safety legislation for a toilet used by both sexes, and for building regs and British Standards.
That’s the design Jolyon wants in schools, ironically in his submission for Keeping Children Safe in Education. In (toilet) design terms, ‘facilities’ means sinks, toilets and hand dryer:
‘Contrary to how the guidance is framed, schools are under no obligation to provide any single-sex facilities whatsoever. It would be entirely lawful and legitimate for a school to provide toilet and changing facilities entirely in self-enclosed lockable rooms, designed for use by one pupil at a time. Indeed, where this is practicable, this may be the most sophisticated way of addressing the needs of all pupils. The guidance should make this clear.’
He’s wrong, of course. Forget about the legislation, regulations, guidance, loss of the amount of provision, safety and health, has he any idea how much that ‘sophisticated’ way would cost schools? He’s out of touch.
This is a quote from a pupil using a Jolyon preferred toilet design- from someone who was really keen to use a ‘gender neutral’ (their words) rather than single sex design:
‘I consider everything in the third floor bathroom a biohazard. Almost every time I make the mistake of going in, I leave trying to purge my mind of the horrors I just witnessed. Whether it is people having sex, poop smeared on the walls, or the toilet being clogged with an entire roll of toilet paper,
horrible things have happened in that bathroom’.
Vaping and drugs were specialities on the other floors.
Jolyon, meet reality.
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Here is the link to the Good Law Project response to KCSIE:
https://goodlawproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/KCSIE-Consultation-Response.pdf
You probably have seen it, but thought you may want to know if not.