Campaign group raises fears around growing trend towards mixed-sex changing areas in light of PSNI statistics

The figures were uncovered by the feminist campaign group the Women’s Rights Network NI, which had made a Freedom of Information request to the PSNI about reports of sex crimes in leisure centre changing rooms.

In particular, it wanted to know about crimes that were alleged to have taken place in the kind of “mixed-sex, open plan village-style changing areas” that have become increasingly prevalent in recent years.

The group’s request covered facilities run by or on behalf of councils, spanned the year 2023, and included reports of sexual assault, rape, and voyeurism.

In response, the PSNI said that it had had received seven such reports: only one was about an incident “in a single-sex changing room".

The PSNI went on to say that would interpret “mixed-sex, open plan village-style changing areas” to mean “any changing area which utilises cubicle changing”.

It was in these areas that the remaining six alleged offences took place.

In all cases, the alleged offenders were male and the complainants female.

The Women’s Rights Network has indicated that only around a quarter of Northern Irish leisure facilities have mixed-sex changing rooms.

While the number of offences reported is in single-digits, the Women’s Rights Network said that it mimics the pattern seen in Great Britain where the figures are higher.

For example it referred to a report in The Sunday Times in 2018 titled “Sex pests target women in mixed changing rooms”, which was based on similar Freedom of Information requests to GB police forces.

Of the 134 complaints it uncovered, the newspaper reported that 120 of them stemmed from mixed-sex changing areas.

The Women’s Rights Network told the News Letter that mixed-sex changing rooms have “caused the avoidable abuse of women and children”, and the numbers show that “the safest changing room is a single-sex changing room”.

"We monitor reports of convictions for voyeurism and other sex offences occurring in leisure centre changing areas, support members of the public in confronting their local authority about mixed-sex changing villages, and communicate with councils, leisure centre operators and architects where new or refurbished leisure centres are being planned with a changing village design,” it said.

The issue is particularly germane now because guidance has just been issued to councils and businesses in GB, telling them how to enforce the Supreme Court’s April 2025 ruling that under the Equality Act 2010, “woman” does not include people who were born male and now identify as women.

In essence, the guidance tells organisations that “trans women” generally should not have access to female-only spaces and activities.

However, Northern Ireland is still awaiting such guidance.