Good Afternoon, I work in a school; we are currently looking to build new sanitary arrangements for both pupil (11-18yo only) and staff use. I am currently being asked whether there are any foreseeable regulatory barriers to placing individual floor to ceiling toilets (each with their own wash hand basins, WC and amenities) within a room for use by both staff and pupils, male and female. According to the school premises regulations this is the stipulation - http://www.legislation.g...999/2/regulation/9/made. Understandably each unit will be is its own room essentially. Can anyone advise of any foreseeable issues with this please?

I believe you should be referring to the 2012 School Premises Regs not the 99 Regs. The 2012 Regs are worded slightly differently. If my memory is correct the 2012 Regs say washrooms should be for the sole use of pupils. Accessible washrooms can be for pupils or staff members.

Forget the rules and regs Common sense says that hormones and young lads are bad enough but put them [the lads and their hormones] in such areas unsupervised* with young girls is inviting problems and all U need is one accusation etc and a persons life is ruined [*I bet that nobody is thinking of supervision]

I work in a school and my interpretation of the Education (School Premises) Regulations 2012 is that toilet and washing facilities must be provided for the sole use of pupils, therefore, staff, visitors, etc cannot share them. The exception is a disabled toilet as this can be used by anyone at the school. Separate toilet facilities must be provided except where the facility is provided in a room that can be secured from the inside and is used by one pupil at a time. We have a large number of buildings of different sizes and this is the case in some of our smaller premises.

There maybe no leagl requirement although it does mention this in the workplace regs. for staff. What about child protection and the protection of employees who could be comprimised by young peope making false allegations.

No. Regulation 4 doesn't permit that. You may care to think of them as "rooms within rooms" but that is not the meaning of the Regs.

Asher Some years ago one of the secondary schools I worked with introduced a unisex toilet & washroom facility for pupils. It adapted a large long room which had previously been a single sex facility by having a row of WC cubicles along one long side of the room and a line of washbasins on the opposite side. The room was accessible from adjacent corridors at both ends and the original doors were removed from the doorways at each end so that the room effectively became a new corridor containing the facilities. The WC cubicles were modified so that they had full floor to ceiling partitions in order to maintain full privacy for occupants because of foreseeable misbehaviour by some pupils, e.g. throwing items or trying to peer into occupied cubicles. The adaptation was made in response to requests from younger pupils (perhaps through the Pupils' Representative Council) who felt intimidated by a minority of older pupils who used the single sex facilities as breaktime smoking dens or bullied younger pupils. Furthermore, the open-ended corridor format of the new facility discouraged the smokers and made it easier for members of staff (whether male or female) on supervision duty during break times to monitor the facility. As a result the new arrangement proved to be very effective and welcomed by pupils and staff. Pupils who preferred to do so could still use single sex facilities elsewhere in the building. I didn't know about the new facility until it had been completed and it was mentioned to me during a visit to the school, partly because some "bigwigs" from the Government's Dept of Education (and possibly also the local education authority) were getting their metaphorical feathers in a ruffle about whether it was legal or not. My advice based on the Education Premises Regulations at that time was that it was legal and that the school had nothing to fear. I added that if I had known about the adaptations during the planning stage, I would have strongly urged the school to forget the open row of washbasins and instead have one washbasin in each WC cubicle for reasons of better hygiene and privacy. The school's headteacher almost certainly discussed the facility and its success with his counterparts from other schools locally, regionally and perhaps even nationally. This may well have led to other schools introducing similar facilities. As I'm quasi-retired and no longer actively involved with schools, do any forum users know of schools which have introduced such facilities in recent years?

Interesting - After my earlier response I did some internet delving about the school to which I referred earlier. It transpires that officials from the Government's Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) - as it was known in 2000 tried to veto the unisex facility when they learned of it. However, the headteacher stood his ground and asked for the school to be allowed a six month trial of the facilities after which the officials could gauge the views of pupils, their parents and staff. The officials agreed and subsequently found the views to be very positive. Ultimately this led to the unisex facility "becoming accepted Government policy ...and also selected as a case study in good design by the Design Council." There's plenty of coverage on various websites about the school and various others which have introduced such facilities, including a wide spectrum of responses ranging from "absolutely disgusting - shouldn't be allowed at any cost." to "why the fuss? - such facilities are commonly provided in various other countries including France and Italy." As an aside, the headteacher involved also provoked another controversy by organising intermittent checks using 'sniffer' dogs to identify pupils bringing illicit drugs into school. The first check identified 2 pupils with cannabis. Various officials opposed the scheme, including one who suggested that the dogs (continually controlled by their expert handlers) might frighten some pupils. Apparently the scheme proved to be effective through frightening any pupils with aspirations of using/selling drugs at school from doing so. Furthermore, over time, various other schools adopted similar schemes and they're now regarded as acceptable by whatever the Government education department is called nowadays!

Since the Equality Act I doubt one can insist on separate WCs as Gay wo/men are just as prone to acts of gross indecency as straight people. I would however object to Teachers sharing the facilities due to the prevalence of recent paedophile prosecutions in that employment sector.