‘Gender-neutral’ toilet at town council offices favoured men - judge

APPEAL OVER DISCRIMINATION CASE DISMISSED

A town council in the county discriminated against a woman employee because its makeshift “gender-neutral” toilet was “more favourable to men”, a tribunal has found.

Earl Shilton Town Council clerk Karen Miller was reportedly told she had to put a sign on the door when she used the men’s lavatory.

She had to walk past a urinal to get to the single cubicle in the toilet and was made to wait for a sanitary bin to be provided.

After Ms Miller won a sex discrimination claim over the toilet arrangement back in 2020, the council went to the Employment Appeal Tribunal - which has now rejected its submission.

Judge James Tayler said Ms Miller was not provided with adequate facilities because she could have come across a man at the urinal, while a sanitary bin should also have been provided.

He said: “That treatment was less favourable than that accorded to men.”

In the judgement published last week, he added: “A woman being at risk of seeing a man using the urinals is obviously not the same as the risk of a man seeing another man using the urinals.

“The claimant was not provided with toilet facilities that were adequate to her needs, because of the risk of coming across a man using the urinal and the lack of a sanitary bin.”

Responding to the judgement employment law specialist Jason Braier is reported as saying it “doesn’t set a precedent, but applies well-trodden principles under the Equality Act on not treating one sex inherently less favourably than the other. “However, it will be interesting to see whether the publicity given to this case encourages other toilet-based sex discrimination claims.” Women’s rights campaigners trying to stop public bodies and businesses replacing separate toilets with “genderneutral” ones in an attempt to be more welcoming to transgender people have seized on the judgement.

Maya Forstater, who won a landmark employment case over her “gender-critical” views, told the Mail: “This case should be a wakeup call to employers and service providers who seem to have forgotten that most people prefer to go to the toilet with privacy from the opposite sex.

“No woman or girl should have to walk past the urinals to get to the toilet, and no man should have the risk of women walking past.

“Even in the smallest of buildings it is possible to have decent facilities, and in larger buildings providing ladies, gents and a unisex option in separate rooms mean that everyone is catered for.”