A recent investigation by TransLucent, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, has found that, across 382 public authorities in England, there were just four complaints about trans women using single-sex facilities over the course of three years.

Between 2022 and 2024, TransLucent submitted hundreds of Freedom of Information requests to major public bodies governing facilities such as hospital wards, local authority toilets and domestic abuse refuges to determine if cisgender women had issued formal complaints about trans women using the services.

As part of their investigation into toilet and changing facilities in council-owned swimming pools and leisure centres, TransLucent’s Freedom of Information requests found that there were “virtually no documented issues” involving trans people and single-sex spaces.

Between 2020 and 2022, TransLucent submitted three rounds of FOI requests to NHS Hospital Wards with a specific question: how many women inpatients had complained that a trans woman was on their ward? Of 102 requests submitted, no authority had reported receiving a complaint of that nature.

In December 2023, TransLucent expanded their dataset by contacting 130 acute trusts and 50 mental health trusts. Of the 157 trusts which provided substantive responses, there was only one complaint, which was not treated as a serious incident by the trust in question.

As part of their investigation into domestic abuse refuges, TransLucent examined how services balance trans inclusion with the safety of other survivors. According to their research, the sector’s approach, which involves established risk-assessment procedures, mixed models combining communal refuges and the independent living model and national placement systems, allows these services to accommodate trans women without compromising the safety of other residents.

Throughout TransLucent’s six investigations, they received 382 responses, with only four complaints about trans women using single-sex facilities. Of those four, one was about policy rather than an individual instance regarding a trans person.

The research illustrates, according to TransLucent, that the issue of trans people using single-sex services “exists primarily in political rhetoric”, rather than in “documented service delivery problems.”

“Our findings carry significant implications for organisations developing policies on single-sex spaces,” the group said in their conclusion. “The evidence suggests that policies should be grounded in empirical risk data rather than hypothetical scenarios.”

They continued: “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.”

TransLucent added that the discourse on trans people using single-sex spaces is “a manufactured controversy, not a documented crisis”.

Responding to the research, Daire Dempsey, TENI’s Executive Director, said: “TransLucent’s investigative work demonstrates what most of us already know – that trans women use bathrooms, hospital wards, and domestic violence services just like other women, and have been doing so for a long time, without posing a threat to other service users. The fear that trans women are a threat to others seems to be based on political and media rhetoric, not on real-life experiences.”

They continued: “These findings must also be considered in light of an October 2025 YouGov poll, which found that 84% of trans people feel that Britain is unsafe for them, with 65% reporting experiencing verbal abuse in public. This is just one example of the many pieces of research that demonstrate that transgender people are overwhelmingly the victims, not the perpetrators, of gendered violence.”

You can access the full report here.