New poll shows most people prefer single-sex toilets and changing rooms
A new UK-wide poll shows that the vast majority of adults prefer single-sex provision of toilets and changing rooms in workplaces, gyms and leisure centres, and for public toilets to be single-sex. Women value this even more than men do.
Sex Matters commissioned an independent company to undertake a national survey of a representative sample. We asked:
For each of the following, do you prefer them to be single sex or mixed sex?
A majority of people of all ages and political shades prefer single-sex toilets
This preference is seen among all groups, overwhelmingly – including Labour and Green voters and 18–24 year-olds. This seems to indicate that, in advocating for “trans rights” unequivocally, and in prevaricating over the Supreme Court judgment, politicians are out of step with their voters.
Toilets matter almost as much as changing rooms
The poll shows that most people prefer single-sex facilities over “gender neutral” (mixed-sex) provision. This is a consistent preference that hardly varies across all the situations we asked about, from workplace toilets (78%) to toilets in parks and pubs (81%) to showers and changing rooms at work (86%).
Only a minority agree that transgender people should be allowed to use whichever facilities they prefer
We also asked what provision should be made for people who identify as transgender. Only around one in five say transgender people should be allowed to use whichever facilities they prefer.
A transgender person is someone who says they are the other sex, that is, a person born male who identifies as a woman, or a person born female who identifies as a man.
Men are slightly less concerned than women about single-sex provision for themselves, but take a stricter line about people using the correct facilities. Almost half of all male respondents agree that transgender people “should use the facilities of their sex at birth”. The option that transgender people “should not use facilities for the opposite sex but there should be an alternative” is more popular with women than with men.
Even among the youngest adults and Green voters, a majority agree that transgender people should not simply be allowed to use whichever facilities they prefer.
What does this tell us?
The vast majority of people prefer straightforward single-sex facilities in workplaces and public spaces. Most do not agree that trans-identifying people should be allowed to use the facilities of their choice. This varies little by age or voting pattern.
Support for trans-identifying people to use the facilities of their choice is low, at 20–21% for toilets and 18–19% for showers and changing rooms. While direct comparison with previous surveys isn’t possible because the question was asked differently, this is significantly lower than in the YouGov poll conducted for Sex Matters in December 2024, before the Supreme Court judgment, where support for men who identified as women to use women’s facilities was 33% for toilets and 27% for changing rooms.
JL Partners polled a nationally representative sample of 1,500 UK adults online between 28th February and 1st March 2026.