Last night, awakened Whitehall departments were charged of misusing taxpayer funds by spending more than £200,000 on restrooms that are gender-neutral.
A paucity of single-sex restrooms has left female government workers feeling “intimidated” after 266 mixed-sex restrooms were added during the last four years to be more accepting of transgender persons.
The Government stated yesterday night that maintaining the places designated for women and girls is a “essential principle.” However, the departments were charged with wasting tax dollars on “redundant renovations.”
Figures showed the Department for Work and Pensions spent at least £110,000 installing 22 gender-neutral toilets since 2018.
The Department for Environment spent £50,000 installing 18 gender-neutral lavatories and re-designating 65 existing facilities with new signs.
And the Freedom of Information requests, compiled by the Taxpayers’ Alliance for the Daily Mail, revealed that the Ministry of Defence had received a complaint about its toilets.
A member of staff said the change to gender-neutral lavatories in the department had been a ‘disaster’ and that there was now a ‘unisex’ toilet only used by men in place of ‘a clean, safe facility for women’.
‘Most of my female colleagues now go to [further] all-female facilities on different floors and many feel intimidated if they do go in the gender-neutral one, which is now not gender-neutral but an all-male facility,’ the complaint read.
They asked that the toilets be returned to female-only use. Last year it emerged women working in the Home Office were visiting other departments to use the bathroom because so many were mixed sex. The true cost of installing the gender-neutral facilities is likely to be much higher as departments did not provide a cost breakdown for 120 of the 266 toilets installed.
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Taxpayers are sick of seeing civil servants splash out on redundant refurbishments.
‘Gender-neutral toilets go against clear government guidance that there “needs to be proper provision of gender-specific toilets”.’ Tory former minister Sir John Hayes told the Daily Mail: ‘The idea that we have got to spend money adapting lavatories at a time when the Government has a huge crisis in terms of its finances just shows what a crazy world some people in Whitehall occupy.’
Earlier this month, Kemi Badenoch, equalities minister at the time, announced a plan to ensure all new public buildings should have separate bathrooms for men and women. Now a Tory leadership candidate, she revealed last week how she was forced to fight civil servants to push through the ban on gender-neutral toilets.
A government spokesman said last night: ‘We are clear that it is an important principle that spaces reserved for women and girls are maintained, in line with the equality act. We keep all internal guidance under regular review.’