HOW LEISURE CENTRES ENABLE SEXUAL PREDATORS
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
A Women’s Rights Network Investigation, 2025
By Faye McGinty
Like an out-of-control bulldozer, the default implementation of a mixed-sex, village-style changing area in swimming pools and leisure centres is laying a trail of destruction through the lives of women and girls.
Sport England, councils, architects and leisure centre operators are all sending a wrecking ball into spaces where women and girls are vulnerable – yet none will take responsibility for the disastrous outcome of ‘designing-in’ harm that is enabling spiralling levels of sex crimes.
In our 2024 Leisure Centre Freedom of Information investigation, we reported that around 30% of local authorities provide no single-sex changing or showering facilities for pool users.
A new WRN Freedom of Information investigation has provided data on sexual violence in leisure centres. Our figures reveal that in one year (2023), across 257 leisure centres throughout England and Wales there were 16 rapes, 80 sexual assaults and 65 acts of voyeurism across 257 leisure centres in England and Wales.
There is no doubt that mixed-sex changing areas attract predatory males; this is not a new phenomenon. But the situation in changing villages is compounded by the large gaps beneath and above cubicle partition walls and mixed-sex shower areas that are enclosed on three sides thereby hiding those inside from the view of patrolling lifeguards and on-duty staff.
Village-style changing areas, inadequacies in cubicle design and the ubiquity of mobile phones have led to wholesale, widespread voyeurism in leisure centre swimming pools. In one particularly horrific case, two men were jailed for voyeurism after being caught with over 6,000 images of women and girls filmed in mixed-sex changing rooms. During our research, we came across numerous court reports where the perpetrators of sex crimes were multiple offenders, often returning to leisure centre facilities to prey on different women and girls.
In their 2025 safeguarding document ‘Wavepower’, Swim England say that mobile phone voyeurism disproportionately affects girls; in their words, it is not a ‘gender neutral practice’. Earlier in 2025, a whistleblower told us that Swim England called an emergency meeting of its safeguarding officers after a spike in reports of voyeurism at public leisure centres used for swimming competitions - 7 young female victims were reported in January 2025 alone.
While those responsible for the safeguarding of young women and girls at swimming pools are trying to improve behaviour in changing rooms, the critical factor remains the most obvious fixable problem – changing room design.
In the Foreword to our new report, Sharron Davies comments that,
“We have an epidemic of male violence against women and girls in this country. Every local authority leisure provider should read this report and take action to protect all female swimmers. This is too important to ignore.”
The WRN Red Flag campaign, which is highlighting the catastrophic failure of the leisure industry to protect women and girls, has a core message:
The safest changing room is a single-sex changing room.
WRN demands that:
Sport England must immediately withdraw all guidance promoting mixed-sex wet-side facilities as the default option for new and refurbished leisure centres.
New facilities must provide single-sex changing facilities for swimming pool users.
Councils must conduct a risk assessment on safety for women and girls before rubber-stamping plans for changing areas in new or refurbished leisure centres.
Crime Prevention officers are consulted on all design plans and their expertise is used to help ‘design out crime’.
Existing changing villages must be assessed for the risk of sex crimes and robust mitigation measures must be applied together with consideration of cost-effective solutions ensuring a female-only space.
Sport England, local councils, leisure centre operators and architects are accountable. They must act now to ensure the safety of women and girls in UK leisure centres.
