Open City opposes proposals for closing gender neutral toilets.
For 30 years, Open City has made London a more open, accessible and inclusive city by opening up physical buildings and big conversations about London’s future to communities who are normally locked out of them.
We believe that London’s spectacular variety of music, food, culture, architecture and civic life is enriched by the diverse nationalities, languages, sexualities, faiths, and ethnicities of the people who call our capital home.
Open City is, therefore, alarmed to see proposals for new building regulations that would see sensitive decisions about the appropriate provision of inclusive toilet facilities in publicly-accessible venues taken out of the hands of ordinary people and replaced with a one-size-fits-all approach that would fail to accommodate the varied needs of London’s diverse communities, in particular trans and gender neutral Londoners. We believe a truly open city is one which removes barriers to all citizens participating in public life rather than introducing new top-down restrictions.
Rather than representing a sincere attempt to provide better lavatory facilities for all, we are concerned that this proposal is, in fact, an example of politicians trying to start a culture war by misusing a public consultation to stir up animosity towards minority communities, spread disinformation and play politics with essential public conveniences.
Gender neutral toilets are useful and widespread facilities which are inclusive and popular. Every household in the country has a gender neutral toilet in their own home for use by family members and guests without any segregation, so the idea that gender neutral loos are unusual is farcical.
Rather than further restricting access to toilet facilities, Britain should be investing in a massive expansion of publicly-accessible loos including the provision of new accessible lavatories for all groups in society. Local council spending on public toilets in England has declined by 50 per cent in the past decade with 700 local-authority lavatories closing since 2010 and 74% of the public now saying there are not enough toilets in their area. Let’s design and build more, high-quality, accessible loos that are genuinely open and inclusive of all rather than imposing restrictions.
The call for technical evidence ends on Friday.
Further reading
Marianna Janowicz, a member of the all-female architecture firm Edit, recently wrote about the history of segregation in London’s public loos for the Open City blog. Her article is online here and contains links to further reading.