Mandate 2:1 female-to-male ratio for public toilets

[IwantToRetire]

The Royal Society for Public Health’s report, “Taking the P*: Decline of the Great British Public Toilet” from 2019 says equality of access to toilets is an important factor, particularly for women.

We believe a fair toilet ratio would be at least 2:1 in favour of women. The British has historically relied on a 1:1 building standard.

Calls to address the unfairness have led to ‘potty parity’ legislation in parts of the US and Canada.

Extract from a petition on the Parliament web site.

I'm guessing that most if not all men in the UK have seen those long queues outside the Ladies, as they pop into the Gents. Probably again and again over decades. I'm guessing that if they think about it at all they simply laugh and congratulate themselves on yet another nice aspect of being male.

Well in fact this petition was started by a man.

And I partly posted because I thought strange that this hasn't come up as an issue, and then saw that boht the US and Canada have implement this.

I can see how in the past when it would be mainly men in positions of power taking decisions just assuming what suited men would be good enough for women.

But strange in more recent years nobody has thought to do anything about the endless queues for women's loos whether at festivals or train stations.

I believe that the original rules weren't just 1:1 but equal space - ignoring the fact that women require cubicles whereas men can usually use a urinal! This legislation is overdue.

I’d settle for more full stop, let alone more relative.

it is SO hard to live a normal life if you have a condition that affects your toileting, now there are so few loos

Placemarking to look later. Very very important.

Fingers crossed I am not quite as restricted as I used to be, but have on occasions had to beg to be allowed to use toilets in strange places. Found most pubs okay about it.

So can totally sympathise.

Excellent petition. Why have we accepted for so long that women have to queue but men don't? The one time it was the other way around was when I was at a beer festival where attendees were 80% male but the toilets had equal numbers male and female, and there was a massive queue for the men and the women were fine. The next year, they put up a temporary sign to convert most of the women's loos into mens loos so that the queueing was roughly equal. It was just a no-brainer how quickly it was solved when it was men suffering the inconvenience.

It's called potty parity legislation im the States, and it's been a thing in about half of the country, including Texas, for 30 odd years.

This looks like it is trying to reinvent the wheel. There is a British Standard, BS 6465-1:2006 which defines the provision of sanitary facilities for almost every type of building and use that anybody could come up with.

https://www.scribd.com/document/713563478/BS-6465-1

The most relevant tables are: Table 7 (Theatres and similar); Table 10 (Restaurants and similar) and Table 11 (Pubs and similar). Any building that actually complies with this BS would knock 2:1 into a cocked hat. The problem is that the agencies responsible for initial and ongoing approval can't be bothered.

What would 2:1 achieve that the existing framework doesn't?

I dont know. But what it does show via your post is that people aren't doing what they are meant to be doing.

So if as many as 10,000 sign this petition then the Government has to respond. Because probably like the petition created they have never heard of what is meant to happen.

!

I have experienced the opposite, some gigs that I’m attending with dh (but not the biggest fan) seem to have very long queues for the gents but it’s because they a. Are all 60+ and b. 80% male. To be honest I try not to go but sometimes his friend drops out at short notice. It was the same at the cricket in the summer, there were women and children there but 75% of attendees were male

This is a very good point. It may encourage the Government to tell Local Government and building regulators to actually do their jobs.

I withdraw my criticism and will sign the petition.

Thanks.

Good point, JanesLittleGirl - if existing laws and regulations were adhered to, things would be a lot better!

Here's a short extract from British Standard 6465-1:2006+A1:2009 – Sanitary Installations.

WCs in Sports and entertainment venues
Minimum provision of sanitary appliances for assembly buildings where most toilet use is during intervals. For example, theatres, cinemas, concert halls, sports stadiums and similar buildings.

2 for up to 250 males; plus 1 for every additional 250 males or part thereof
2 for up to 20 females; plus 1 for every additional 20 females or part thereof up to 500 females; and 1 per 25 females or part thereof over 500 females
How Many Toilets Do You Need?

My maths isn't up to expressing that as ratios😬

Workplace regs also specify numbers for men and women's facilities, I think.

I know a lot about this 😅

If you look at all the standards and all the work that’s gone in to them over the years you can see why all the ‘why don’t we just’ is so ridiculous.

There’s a lot of calculations that go in to toilet provision when people plan properly respecting building control and British Standards. There’s many good people that have dedicated their lives to toilet design.

Here’s a good worked example in Section 2.2 on how Network Rail have calculated toilet provision in a station for men and women.

The problem stadiums have is when the sex ratios change depending on event.

https://www.networkrail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/NR_GN_CIV_200_04-Public-Toilets.pdf

Having looked at the petition it also discusses unisex toilets for transgender individuals but fails to recognise Accessible toilets as such. Accessible toilets should come before unisex toilets. Not all places have accessible toilets and that is a much bigger problem.

Thanks! I wasn't wanting one. I often just post stuff as points of information.

And was thinking you should start a petition saying they should implement or make mandatory or something the BS guidelines.

And assuming they accept it as a petition (I am sure they have all sorts of tricky rules) it would also highlight that they cant even be bothered to implement provision as laid out by existing guidelines.

Seriously!

I dont know, but assume that isn't the point.

It is dealing with the imbalance in terms of sex as in potty parity.

Which is why I think as an afterthought, or under pressure from children or something then tagged on there should be unisex.

It's worse in the Netherlands. Public toilets are few and far between and you usually have to pay to use the toilet in cafes/McDonald's even if you are already a paying customer. Perhaps unsurprisingly this lack of anywhere to use the toilet meant that lots of men just pee in the street instead. To try to prevent this the municipality spends lots of money on pop up urinals for men in the street. No provision for children, no provision for women. There isn't any need to provide places for women to pee because women don't usually piss in the street and make it stink so there isn't a problem to solve. It's sort of rewarding mens bad behaviour. The urinals aren't even designed so that small boys or less able men can use them. It's just adult (able bodied) men and everyone else can go swivel.

Is there a link to the actual petition?

Mumsnet HQ don't like petition links because this is a discussion website not a campaign website. Just copy the thread title and pop it into your search-engine of choice and you'll find it

The phrase ‘spend a penny’ comes from putting an old penny in the toilet cubicle door. Urinals were free however to try and get men to stop weeing in the street. Urine was even dissolving buildings. You can still see urine defectors on lots of buildings like the Bank of England and down alleyways due to male behaviour.

Also due to male behaviour, a lot of public toilets in this country have been shut down because of misuse. I believe there’s one council run toilet for every 15,000 people now. It’s also why I don’t like the vague ‘add a unisex’ guidance. It doesn’t work and can cause more problems than it fixes. Accessible toilets are almost always unisex and have more positive use and at least a few more safeguards.

The petition unfortunately is unlikely to get anywhere as the government aren’t going to get venues to completely change their toilets. It would cost billions as a country. ADT was not retrospective, for example. It was a step in the right direction though, as we rely more on private provision.

The ratio of potential users of [a] unisex toilets and [b] accessible toilets is
approx 16 million disabled people [not all of whom need adapted toilets, of course]
approx 260,000 transgender people [not all of whom will use a unisex toilet on principle]

So... every building/venue must have mixed sex toilets on the off-chance that one of 260,000 in a population of many millions may turn up in that building/venue and refuse to use the toilet designated for their sex, not because they can't use it, as is the case with many disabled people, but because they choose not to use it.

The fall-out from that noisy, aggressive, sometimes violent and sometimes disgusting campaign is that established building standards/Workplace Regs/British Standards have been abandoned, and an expensive, disruptive, irrational mish-mash of less safe and otherwise inferior mixed sex provision has been rushed through, much of which appears to be non-compliant.

All at the behest of such a tiny minority of the population! Go figure..

It’s even less than that.

Between February and April 2017, 5,375 lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT)
people across England, Scotland and Wales completed an online questionnaire about their life in Britain today, which was administered by YouGov on behalf of Stonewall.

In that poll, 51% of respondents said they were disabled.

That means that within that cohort, depending on their disabilities, some will need an accessible toilet anyway.

The Stonewall booklet that discussed their survey results was the most quoted source of literature in the public consultation that fed through into Approved Document T. It distorted the safety analysis for everyone. In terms of toilet examples and safety, the worst account was a man being pushed out of women’s toilet washroom.

This is on the bottom of the scale of bad things that happen in toilets, which is more likely to affect women, children and medically vulnerable people.

@MarieDeGournay thank you for that post.

I know there’s a conflict with potentially more people using the few accessible toilets but I honestly think we need more accessible toilets (particularly in single sex accommodation) rather than adding a standard universal toilet like mentioned in this petition. There will always be a need for a unisex accessible toilet but any unisex toilets need to be thought out so carefully not just an add-on. That’s why the petition isn’t as nuanced as it could be.

And as Marie says, this is why regs, legislation and standards already exist and should be followed.

That's just gross!

I cant believe women in the Netherlands haven't made some sort of complaint.

I've always wanted to go to Amsterdam.

I think I have lost interest now!