Toilet trouble: Earl Shilton Town Council v Miller

You’ve probably never heard of Earl Shilton, a market town in rural Leicestershire. Its town council got into trouble recently because of its staff toilets.

It’s such a tiny town council that it operates out of a local church. Male employees get to use the church toilet. Female employees had to use a nearby toilet in the adjacent local children’s playgroup. They had to attract the attention of a member of the playgroup staff to get in, meaning the toilets weren’t suitable if they had to be used in a hurry.

The Earl Shilton town council therefore decided to implement their own measures to combat this issue.

It decided to let its female employees use the men’s toilets, consisting of a urinal trough and a cubicle. The door could not be locked. There was a sign a woman could hang outside to warn men that a woman was in there, but it often fell off. That meant a woman entering the toilet, or exiting the cubicle, might see a man using the urinal.  By contrast, a man would not see a woman on the toilet, as she would be locked in the cubicle.

There was also another issue regarding the sanitary bin not being emptied on a schedule but rather only if requested.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal said this was sex discrimination.  Female employees were forced, by the employer’s inadequate facilities, to see men using the toilet – but men were not forced to see women using the toilet. The sanitary bin not being emptied to a regular schedule was also held to be sex discrimination.