We need to talk about toilets – but not because of trans people

Lisa Hallgarten, Brook’s Head of Policy and Public Affairs, talks about public toilet provision in the UK and how it should be improved for the benefit of the whole population.

Toilets – and conversations about whether we are safe in them, excluded from them, welcomed into them, or are an object of fear and suspicion in them – have become the symbol of conflicting beliefs around trans rights. The Supreme Court ruling on what ‘sex’ means in the context of providing single sex facilities/activities/spaces has resulted in fear from some trans people that they will be excluded from full participation in public life because they won’t be guaranteed access to a toilet facility that is safe or appropriate for them. This fear has been met with accusations of panic and exaggeration, only to be confirmed by interim guidance from the EHRC* that states that some trans people may not have the right to use either the men’s or women’s toilets.   

Disabled people have expressed fear that their toilets are being talked about as a useful alternative for trans and non-binary people, which could result in even more pressure on toilets that are already too few and far between. Businesses and cultural venues have been wondering how they are going to make their venues safe and welcoming for trans people while complying with the law.  

Setting aside the lack of evidence that giving trans people access to the single sex toilets of their choice reduces the safety of cis people – and setting aside whether this is really the hill that gender critical feminists want to die on – there is a proper conversation to be had about toilets in public places, places of work and education (and it isn’t this one).  

Public toilet provision is terrible in the UK.

In its 2019 report Taking the P*** the Royal Society of Public Health recognised the lack of public toilets as a ‘threat to health, mobility and equality’. It is likely that the number of public toilets has fallen further since then. If you are lucky enough to find a toilet when you need one it is often a small badly maintained cubicle and without space to swing a tampon let alone a cat. These arrangements disadvantage a majority of the population in one way or another.  

If you are one of the 51% who menstruate – especially anyone with heavy periods, using menstrual cups or even just applicator free tampons – you have likely experienced trying to remove menstrual blood from your hands with toilet paper before being able to wash at basins outside the cubicle in shared spaces. While I don’t believe that we should stigmatise menstruation by panicking about traces of blood on our hands, being able to manage your periods with the level of privacy you choose is part and parcel of period dignity. 

Now add in those people with a stoma (about 200,000 people in the UK) who need to change a colostomy bag; those using incontinence pads or anyone with a range of common conditions that require the hygiene and privacy of having an in-cubicle wash basin as well as a usable bin. It’s probably the majority of us at some point in our life as we age, experience poor health or disability. 

The fact is that a significant majority of the population will not get their needs for sufficient and appropriate toilets met most of the time when they are out in public, at work or at school. 

I do not agree with Lady Falkner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) that “trans-advocacy organisations should be using their powers of advocacy to ask for those third spaces.”   Trans people are a tiny minority of the population and don’t have the political, economic or social capital to fight this alone. Most importantly it’s not really their battle.

If we care about everybody’s full, anxiety-free, participation in public and cultural life, we need to do better.

We would all benefit from better toilet infrastructure including toilets with basins, proper (functioning not overflowing) bins, shelves, coat and bag hooks, mirrors and more. This is an issue of public health and wellbeing. Government must provide financial support to local authorities to create more of these. They must mandate that space be made to create them in all new-build and conversion projects.  

Hopefully by the time we win that battle the storm in a toilet bowl that we are now experiencing will have blown over and regardless of sex, gender, age or disability we’ll all be using toilets we can feel really comfortable in. 

*The EHRC interim guidance is not statutory.  A consultation on the EHRC code of practice has just been launched. Brook encourages all those who are affected by the Supreme Court judgment to contribute to the consultation.