Implement two female loos for every male one

A new report has called for fair provision of public toilets for women, saying the aim should be to have two female loos to every male one.

Taking the P***, published by the Royal Society for Public Health, explores the dire state of the UK’s public conveniences, the impact this has on health and wellbeing, and public perceptions of what should be done. It finds that increasing pressure on local authority budgets has led to the privatisation or closure of many public toilets.

The health burden of this declining public toilet provision was found to have disproportionately fallen on people with ill health or disability, the elderly, women, outdoor workers, and the homeless. The ongoing failure to provide adequate public loos directly hampers some of the UK’s wider public health efforts, such as curbing obesity, and keeping our increasingly elderly population physically active and socially engaged with the community.

The report urges the government to make the provision of public toilets compulsory on a well planned and regulated basis, and for ‘potty parity’ laws, such as those found in the US and Canada, to be emulated in the UK to ensure fair provision for women. With more urinals than cubicles, men - unlike women - rarely queue.

A BBC map of public toilet provision in 2018 found there were 4,486 run by major councils in the UK, down from 5,159 in 2010. In 37 council areas, there were no public toilets provided at all.

The government maintains that it is down to councils to manage their resources and provide necessary services for people.

Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the RSPH, said: “Our report highlights that the dwindling public toilet numbers in recent years is a threat to health, mobility, and equality that we cannot afford to ignore. As is so often the case in this country, it is a health burden that falls disproportionately on already disadvantaged groups.

“Standing in the way of this necessary and serious policy discussion is a stubbornly persistent ‘toilet taboo’, a decade of cuts to local authorities, and an increasingly ingrained notion that public toilets are merely a ‘nice-to-have’. Public toilets are no luxury: it’s high time we begin to see them as basic and essential parts of the community – just like pavements and street lights – that enable people to benefit from and engage with their surroundings.

“It is deeply concerning that amidst a national obesity crisis, at a time when public health policy is to encourage outdoor exercise, our declining public toilet provision is in fact encouraging more people to stay indoors.”