Summary
TransLucent's Freedom of Information investigations across 382 public bodies, covering a period of over three years, found only four complaints about trans women using single-sex spaces, conclusively demonstrating that this widely publicised concern as part of the culture war against trans people is not supported by documented evidence from service providers.
What FOI Data Shows About Trans Women in Single Sex Spaces
What FOI Data Shows About Trans Women in Single Sex Spaces —this article is the conclusion from six separate investigations conducted by TransLucent, examining whether transgender women’s access to “single-sex facilities” creates safety or dignity issues in practice.
Across local authority toilets, hospital wards, and domestic abuse refuges, the evidence demonstrates that political and media rhetoric about trans women threatening women in single-sex spaces is unsupported by actual complaints. For transparency, the service providers’ responses to our three most recent investigations are available on this website as PDFs. To view, refer to the specific investigation.
The Methodology: 382 FOI Requests Across Public Services
Between 2022 and 2024, TransLucent submitted hundreds of Freedom of Information requests to major public bodies in England, targeting the 50 largest local authorities by population and numerous NHS trusts. The investigations focused on recorded complaints about transgender people using gender-appropriate facilities, specifically examining whether cisgender women patients or service users had formally objected to sharing spaces with trans women. This systematic approach captured data from organisations serving millions of people, creating a robust dataset that reveals the gap between the gender-critical ideology movements’ allegations and documented reality.
Local Authority Facilities: Toilets and Changing Rooms
The first investigation examined council-owned women’s toilets and changing facilities often located at swimming pools ans leisure centres. Of 40 usable responses from large English local authorities, 35 reported zero complaints about transgender people using these spaces during 2022. Five councils held no relevant records, and the single reported incident involved a cisgender person in the “wrong” facility, not a trans person. A subsequent follow-up survey covering 2024 data from councils serving over 16.5 million people found 36 authorities with zero complaints, two reporting one complaint each (one about policy, one based on perception rather than confirmed identity), and nine not collecting such data. What FOI Data Shows About Trans Women in Single Sex Spaces, when examining local government facilities, where millions of daily interactions produce virtually no documented issues.
NHS Hospital Wards: The Ward “Invasion” That Never Was
Three rounds of FOI requests to NHS foundation trusts between April 2020 and June 2022 targeted a specific question: how many women inpatients had complained that a trans woman was on their ward? Across 102 FOI requests, no trust identified such a complaint.
The December 2023 NHS Same-Sex Accommodation Survey expanded this work by contacting 130 acute trusts and 50 mental health trusts regarding written complaints received up to 31 August 2023 concerning trans women sharing wards or women-only day rooms. Of 157 trusts providing substantive responses, only one acute trust reported a single relevant complaint, which was not treated as a serious incident. All other trusts reported none. What FOI Data Shows About Trans Women in Single Sex Spaces in NHS settings, where trans patients are often placed in single rooms rather than multi-bed bays as a matter of routine practice.
Domestic Abuse Refuges: Safety Without Exclusion
The investigation into domestic abuse refuges examined how services balance trans inclusion with survivor safety. The research found that the sector’s established risk-assessment procedures, mixed models combining communal refuges with the independent living model, and national placement systems enable services to accommodate trans women without compromising other residents’ safety. Claims of trans women “invading” refuges are contradicted by sector practices, which focus on individual risk assessment rather than blanket exclusions. The investigation concluded that where exclusion occurs, it typically reflects the stance of explicitly trans-hostile providers rather than any pattern of problematic behaviour by trans women seeking refuge from violence.
In May 2024, Women’s Aid surveyed members on single-sex service provision and policies. The survey had a very low response rate, with just 23.7% of the members responding. If there were issues in the domestic abuse sector, obviously, the survey would have been better supported.
The Consolidated Findings: Four Complaints, Not a Crisis
Across all six investigations, TransLucent gathered 382 substantive FOI responses covering local authorities, NHS trusts, and domestic abuse services.
The total number of confirmed complaints about trans women in single-sex spaces?
Four.
One of those four complaints was about policy rather than any individual trans person. The remaining three complaints emerged from millions of service interactions across England’s largest public bodies. What FOI Data Shows About Trans Women in Single Sex Spaces becomes undeniable when the numbers are consolidated: four complaints from 382 public bodies serving millions of people demonstrate that this issue exists primarily in political rhetoric, not in documented service delivery problems.
Why the Disconnection Between Rhetoric and Reality?
The investigations highlight several factors that explain why public discourse diverges so dramatically from the documented evidence.
1: Media coverage often conflates hypothetical concerns with actual incidents, creating a perception of widespread problems where none exist.
2: Some organisations have implemented restrictive policies based on anticipated complaints rather than real data, effectively solving a problem that the evidence shows isn’t occurring.
3: The term “single-sex spaces” (for which there is no legal definition) has become politically charged, with its meaning shifting from practical safety considerations to ideological positioning. Our FOI data addresses this by focusing on recorded complaints—formal objections that organisations must document and investigate – rather than informal expressions of discomfort or political opposition to trans inclusion.
Implications for Policy and Practice
Our findings carry significant implications for organisations developing policies on single-sex spaces. The evidence suggests that policies should be grounded in empirical risk data rather than hypothetical scenarios. For local authorities, the near-total absence of complaints indicates that existing approaches to facility access are working effectively. For NHS trusts, the data support guidance that trans patients can be accommodated on appropriate wards without generating patient complaints, particularly when single rooms are available. For domestic abuse services, the research validates risk-assessment approaches that evaluate individuals rather than implementing blanket bans that would exclude vulnerable trans women fleeing violence.
The Human Impact Behind the Numbers
Behind the statistics are real people navigating daily life. Trans women using public toilets, accessing healthcare, or seeking refuge from domestic abuse are not engaged in political protest; they’re simply trying to live safely and with dignity. Our FOI investigations demonstrate that their presence doesn’t generate ‘the wave of complaints’ that gender-critical and culture war rhetoric suggests. Instead, the data reveals quiet coexistence, where trans women use appropriate facilities without incident, and where services manage any concerns through existing individualised processes rather than blanket exclusions.
Conclusion: Evidence Over Anxiety
What FOI Data Shows About Trans Women in Single Sex Spaces – repeated across six separate investigations, represents one of the most comprehensive data-driven examinations of this contentious issue. With 382 public bodies reporting only four relevant complaints, the evidence is overwhelming: trans women’s access to appropriate single-sex spaces is not creating documented safety or dignity problems in England’s major public services.
As policymakers, journalists, and service providers consider this issue, the FOI data provides a crucial reality check. Decisions about single-sex spaces should be guided by documented evidence of actual problems rather than political narratives about hypothetical ones.
