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Toilets, changing rooms and showers – are you on the right side of the law?

ended 14. December 2025

This all started with a grievance. Ten people sharing one toilet and one colleague with a bathroom routine that would put Sheldon Cooper to shame. Result. Frayed tempers, formal complaints and a very awkward HR chat.

It is not just internal drama. Facilities are now featuring in tribunal cases, including Sandie Peggie v Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton (8 December 2025), about a nurse unhappy with sharing a women’s changing room with a trans woman doctor. The tribunal partially upheld her harassment claim against NHS Fife over how the situation was handled. You can read the judgment here:

https://www.gov.uk/employment-tribunal-decisions/s-peggie-v-fife-health-board-and-dr-b-upton-4104864-slash-2024

Legally, employers must provide “suitable and sufficient” toilets and washing facilities, with HSE tables setting minimum numbers by headcount. For the official HSE guidance and the loo number tables, see:

https://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-safety/workplace-facilities/health-safety.htm

Showers are required where work is particularly dirty, hot or involves hazardous substances, and staff are increasingly asking for showers and better changing facilities because of cycling, running or walking to work. For many small employers in older or cramped buildings, that is easier said than done.

We are looking for HR professionals, employment lawyers, health and safety specialists and small business owners to talk about what is really happening on the ground.

Questions to answer

  • In your experience, are most small and medium employers actually meeting the HSE minimums on toilets, basins, changing rooms and showers, or is this an area where corners get cut?
  • What real-world problems have you seen, such as queues, awkward shared changing spaces, lack of privacy, or unsuitable facilities for women, disabled staff or trans and non-binary staff?
  • How are you handling requests for showers and improved changing facilities from staff who cycle, run, or walk to work, especially in older or space-limited buildings?
  • If you could update the current rules, what changes would you make to improve them for today’s workplaces and smaller employers?

 

4 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Kate Underwood
Founder & Chief People Strategist at Kate Underwood HR and Training
If your office loos feel like a student house after freshers week, do not be surprised when people stop feeling valued at work. Most SMEs I see technically tick the HSE boxes, but day to day it is one knackered cubicle, no privacy, no period bins, no accessible loo and no real thought for trans or non binary staff. That is when tempers flare, tears happen in the toilets and grievances or tribunals follow. Queues, awkward shared changing rooms and people getting changed in their cars are sadly normal. Showers are the new flashpoint: in older or cramped buildings, we are brokering deals on shared facilities, nearby gyms or one decent unisex shower at the next refurb. Sheldon might have had a point with his roommate agreement; you need clear, written ground rules. Review your WC situation with your team at least once a year, or risk Rectum v Your Ltd later.
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Editor
Scott Gallacher
Director at Rowley Turton
We’re fortunate in our office that we have three toilets for around twenty people, shared across three firms in the building, so capacity hasn’t been an issue for us.

That said, the HSE guidance does feel somewhat blunt rather than practical. For example, up to five people can share one toilet, but adding a sixth person suddenly means you “need” a second toilet – even though the same guidance allows up to 25 people to share two toilets. That means for workforces of 6–25 employees you end up with a very wide and arguably illogical ratio range, from 3:1 to 12.5:1.

In the real world, usage patterns, gender mix, working hours, hybrid working and shared buildings often matter far more than rigid headcount thresholds. A more principles-based approach – focusing on queuing, privacy, cleanliness and accessibility – would probably be more helpful for smaller employers than hard step-changes tied to single headcount increases.
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Editor
Kate Allen
Owner at Finest Stays
In small towns it’s hard enough to find office space at all, let alone anything with glossy ‘ideal workplace’ facilities. Most of us are operating out of charming-but-ancient buildings that were never designed for modern compliance. In reality many offices share a single loo between everyone, routinely fall outside the HSE tables. It's a classic case of HSE gone mad against a backdrop of reality and the struggle SME's face.
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Kundan Bhaduri
Entrepreneur, Investor and Landlord at The Kushman Group
British workplace hygiene has become a minefield of regulation, sensitivity and basic human dignity, territories where the law, common sense and contemporary workplace expectations have begun to collide with particular force.

This Scottish nurse's case is particularly telling. She was unhappy at sharing a women's changing room with a trans woman doctor, which one can understand.

The nurse is articulating genuine discomfort about privacy and vulnerability at moments when people are literally undressed. The tribunal's partial upholding of her harassment claim against NHS Fife suggests that simply declaring facilities "shared" without addressing the underlying anxiety represents institutional negligence rather than progressive policy. Yet here lies the authentic complication: one person's essential dignity is another person's exclusion, and pretending this tension does not exist serves neither party.