February 20th, 2019 by Chris Chapman

Hygiene should be one of the top concerns for any business. This is important in every area of your workplace, but it’s especially important in your washrooms. This isn’t just for the sake of your staff and customers (although that’s important!), it’s to ensure you don’t fall foul of the many laws and regulations that govern hygiene standards at work. While these regulations are largely there for your protection, many of them aren’t exactly simple. This means many businesses will end up breaking these regulations without realising it! With over 15 years’ experience in the hygiene industry, we’re quite familiar with a lot of these laws and we get a lot of questions from business owners about what they need to do to get their business in line. Below, you can find some of the most common questions we get asked about washroom hygiene and, more importantly, what you can do to make sure your business is up to the highest standards.  

How Many Toilets Do I Need in My Commercial Washroom?

This depends on the amount of staff and customers you have at your workplace every day. Generally, if you work in an office with under 5 people, you’ll only need a single mixed-use washroom. In larger offices with large numbers of staff – or in customer-facing businesses – you will need more washrooms. For more detailed information, check the tables below*.     Toilets used by women only or mixed-use washrooms:

  Toilets used by men only:

Am I Required to Have a Disabled Toilet in My Building?

The short answer is that in most situations, you will be required by law to provide a disabled toilet in order to comply with the Equality Act 2010. This is a complicated issue, though, as the letter of the law itself doesn’t directly say that you have to have a certain number of disabled toilets available. The law only states that you have to make “reasonable adjustments” to make sure differently-abled people are not at a “substantial disadvantage” when they visit your building. What counts as a “reasonable adjustment” varies from business to business. Large office buildings with a lot of resources will be expected to invest a lot more in their disabled facilities than a small café, but in practice, this usually means disabled-friendly toilet facilities at a minimum. While the law surrounding what is a reasonable adjustment is vague, if it’s found that you’ve failed to make them, you could be open to damages and a costly, PR-damaging court case. It’s best to stay on the safe side and ensure you have disabled-friendly toilets with lots of room, grab bars, and an emergency pull-cord.

Do I Need Sanitary Bins for Feminine Hygiene Products in My Washrooms?

You definitely need to provide your female staff and customers with a discreet bin for their sanitary products. This is important for maintaining a comfortable ladies’ room, but it’s also a legal requirement! Not doing so puts you at risk of breaching several laws, including the Environmental Protection Act and workplace health and safety laws. This makes sanitary bins an essential, but all-too-often overlooked, part of washroom hygiene. It’s wise to pair your sanitary bins with some sanitary bin liners and some air freshening granules. While these things aren’t technically a legal requirement, they might as well be in practice. This is because you are required to manage sanitary waste to the point of disposal and keep your washrooms up to an acceptable standard of cleanliness without any lingering foul odours. The only practical way to do this is to use sanitary bin liners and bin fresheners, so bear this in mind when picking up a sanitary bin.

Am I Required by Law to Provide Baby Changing Facilities?

You aren’t required by law to provide baby changing facilities as not all businesses need them, but not doing so could still put your business at risk of breaching the law. How? Well, even if you don’t provide baby changing facilities, desperate parents will still attempt to change their babies in your washrooms from time to time. If there aren’t any baby changing facilities in your business, chances are there won’t be any nappy disposal bins either, and dirty nappies are classed as offensive waste. Offensive waste needs to be disposed of separately from your usual washroom waste, and not doing so is a real hygiene risk. If your customers simply dump a used nappy down the toilet or into your regular waste bin, that can lead to big problems! Ensuring you have a decent baby changing table and a nappy bin to fit in your washroom is generally good practice for customer-facing businesses for this reason. You’ll also find it makes your business much more appealing to new parents. With 700,000 babies being born every year, that’s a lot of potential customers you can attract with the relatively low-cost addition of a baby changing table! Use your common sense, though; if you’re a small office that doesn’t deal with customers, you probably won’t need a baby changing table. However, if you work in a family pub, you’re far more likely to need at least one quality baby changer.

What Hand Dryers Do I Need in My Washroom?

You’re required by law to provide a way for people to dry their hands in your washroom. Exactly what that is can be left entirely up to you, within reason. A small office with a couple of staff might be able to get away with a hand towel, although you will need to ensure it’s washed regularly to keep it hygienic. A better idea is to pick up either an electric hand dryer or a paper towel dispenser to ensure you have a clean, low-maintenance hand drying solution for all your users. Both hand drying options are very hygienic, so which one you pick should come down to your requirements (we wrote an article to help you work out which option is best for your business, so click here to read it). Whichever one you choose, you’ll still need to keep it clean, so it’s best to choose a quality hand dryer or paper towel dispenser that’s durable and easy to wipe down during your regular washroom cleaning.

Do I Have to Provide a Smoking Area?

You aren’t required to provide smoking areas to your staff or customers. In fact, any enclosed smoking shelters are against the law, although it’s entirely up to you whether you allow smoking on outdoor areas of your business (such as an outdoor car park). For many businesses, this isn’t really an issue, but for pubs and nightclubs, it’s a good idea to offer a well-presented outdoor smoking area for your customers to use. It’s good practice to fit these with cigarette bins to collect butts and keep your customers comfortable with an outdoor heater. *Information taken from HSE.gov.uk