Woke Whitehall washes away £200k of your money on mixed-gender toilets for staff
- Ministry of Work and Pensions spent at least £110,000 on 22 neutral toilets
- Female officials felt ‘intimidated’ by lack of same-sex toilets
- Govt said it was an ‘important principle that spaces were reserved for women and girls’
Woke up Whitehall wards were accused last night of wasting taxpayers’ money by spending more than £200,000 on gender-neutral toilets.
Female officials feel ‘intimidated’ by a lack of same-sex toilets after 266 mixed facilities were installed in the past four years to be more welcoming to transgender people.
The government said last night that it is an “important principle that spaces reserved for women and girls should be preserved.” But the departments were accused of wasting public money on “unnecessary renovations.”
Figures showed that since 2018 the Department of Work and Pensions has spent at least £110,000 installing 22 gender-neutral toilets.
The Department of the Environment spent £50,000 installing 18 gender neutral toilets and redesigning 65 existing facilities with new signs.
Woke Whitehall wards were accused last night of wasting taxpayers’ money by spending over £200,000 on gender neutral toilets (file photo)
And Freedom of Information requests, prepared by the Taxpayers’ Alliance for the Daily Mail, revealed that the Department of Defense had received a complaint about its toilets.
An employee said the transition to gender-neutral toilets in the ward had been a ‘disaster’ and that there is now a ‘unisex’ toilet used only by men rather than ‘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 when going to the gender-neutral facility, which is now not gender-neutral, but an all-male facility,” the indictment read.
They asked for the toilets to be returned for use by women. Last year it was found that women who worked in the Home Office visited other departments to go to the toilet because so many were of mixed sex. The actual cost of installing the gender neutral facilities is likely to be much higher as the departments have not provided a cost breakdown for 120 of the 266 installed toilets.
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers are tired of seeing officials indulge in unnecessary refurbishments.
“Gender-neutral toilets go against clear government guidelines that there should be ‘proper facilities for gender-specific toilets’.” Former Tory Minister Sir John Hayes told the Daily Mail: ‘The idea of us having to spend money to upgrade toilets at a time when the government is in a massive financial crisis shows what a crazy world some people in Whitehall are doing. occupy. ‘
Earlier this month, Equal Opportunities Minister Kemi Badenoch announced a plan to ensure that 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 officials to push through the ban on gender-neutral toilets.
A government spokesperson said last night: “It is clear to us that it is an important principle that spaces for women and girls are preserved, in line with the Equality Act. We regularly update all internal guidelines.’