New offices, schools, hospitals and entertainment venues will be expected to have separate men’s and women’s toilets, government sources confirmed, in a bid to limit the sole installation of gender-neutral facilities.
Ministers will formally announce this week that action is being taken to prevent non-residential buildings being built with only “universal” toilets. The move will involve changes to building regulations and planning guidelines.
The plans, led by Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch, were quietly approved last month, the Sunday Telegraph reported. The government said some children avoid using toilets at school because they only have access to gender-neutral facilities.
The policy was first proposed in May 2021 and was criticized as transphobic because it did not offer an alternative plan for trans and non-binary people.
Transgender rights activists have argued that gender-neutral restrooms can be reassuring for some transgender men and women who fear discrimination in binary restrooms.
The then-Secretary of State for Housing, Robert Jerrick, denied the charge and cited some women’s concerns about reduced privacy and longer queues as a result of the gender-neutral facilities.
It follows an intense debate over whether trans women should be given automatic access to single-sex facilities such as toilets, prisons and changing rooms. More recently, there has been a debate about the participation of trans women in women’s sports.
Badenoch said the planned changes to toilet regulations were legal and “important” to provide single-sex spaces for men and women.
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The guidelines will apply to buildings above a certain size and will be set after a technical consultation in the autumn.
Downing Street wants the changes to apply to all buildings that operate as business premises. The Government Property Agency’s guidance will be updated to ensure that new or refurbished government buildings have single-sex toilets.
Some women’s rights groups argue that women are “disadvantaged” by the gender-neutral facilities, which contain a combination of urinals and cubicles, because they cannot use the urinals while men can use the cubicles.
“Furthermore, many women and girls are unwilling to walk past urinals to get to cubicles in former men’s quarters,” the campaign group Fair Play for Women said in a document to the government.
In 2019, London’s Old Vic theater became the latest venue to face criticism when it converted all its men’s and women’s toilets to gender-neutral toilets as part of a refurbishment.
The theater has doubled the number of toilets in the building and said it will mark the new rooms with pictures of a cubicle or urinal, “allowing people to make their own decision about which toilet is right for them”.
A government source confirmed an announcement was expected this week.
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