Disabled athletes and sports fans are urging ministers to ensure that UK sporting venues have fully accessible toilets so they can enjoy sport in the same way as everybody else. At the moment fewer than 10% of venues have these facilities.

The Paralympic athlete and campaigner Anne Wafula Strike has written to the sports minister, Lucy Frazer, and the disability minister, Tom Pursglove, saying that current facilities are leading to “serious injustice” and are preventing disabled fans and athletes from enjoying sport.

There are two types of toilets for people with disabilities – accessible toilets that are big enough to accommodate a standard wheelchair and have a height-adjusted toilet and sink, and changing places toilets that are bigger and can accommodate disabled people with greater support needs, including those using larger power-assisted wheelchairs and those who need one or two carers to accompany them to the toilet, those who need hoists, an adult-sized changing table and space on both sides of the toilet giving more room to manoeuvre.

There are more than 250,000 disabled people who need a changing places toilet but there are currently just 1,893 of them registered in various parts of the UK. According to government mapping there are many areas that need to improve provision of these toilets and nine areas that have none of them at all.

To put the 1,893 figure into context, Wembley Stadium has 2,618 toilet cubicles and urinals including two changing places toilets and 147 accessible toilets.

The government has allocated more than £30m in recent years for the provision of changing places toilets but campaigners say that, while this support is welcome, there are still far too many gaps in provision.

A campaign to increase the number of changing places toilets at sporting venues is being coordinated by Rise For Sport which wants to see them in every sporting venue by 2023 to allow everyone to participate in or spectate in their favourite sport.

In her letter to ministers, shared with the Guardian, Wafula Strike, who went public in 2017 about how she was forced to wet herself on a train due to a lack of an accessible working toilet, said current legislation does not go far enough.

It states that while any newly built venue for more than 350 people must include a changing places toilet there is no legal requirement on existing venues to provide one. It leaves people with disabilities such as motor neurone disease, cerebral palsy or multiple sclerosis faced with the choice of either staying at home, only going out for a couple of hours or being changed on a dirty toilet floor or in the back of a car.

“This is an urgent issue and needs to be addressed by a change in legislation to ensure that disabled people are not left behind,” Wafula Strike says in her letter. She has called for a meeting with ministers as soon as possible.

“Sport is such an important part of society. It has played a huge role in my life and it is saddening to hear disabled people face barriers to access,” she adds.

Three disabled sports fans, wheelchair users with cerebral palsy, have launched a petition calling for all sports venues to have changing places toilets.

Lorna Fillingham, a disability campaigner who has a 13-year-old daughter with a rare genetic condition who needs to use a changing places toilet, said: “My daughter cannot stand or walk. She needs 24-hour support. I wouldn’t even consider taking her to a sporting event because of the lack of changing places toilets. Disabled people talk about ‘pee maths’, limiting fluids so they won’t need to use a toilet while they’re out. At the age of 13 my daughter’s world should be expanding but it’s shrinking.”

A government spokesperson said: “We want to see a step-change in the number of changing places toilets across the country. We recently announced up to £30.5m funding to local authorities in England to boost the number of larger accessible toilets over three years. Changing places toilets are a vital facility for people who cannot use standard accessible toilets and for their family and carers.

“That’s why they will be installed in existing buildings and we have made it compulsory for new public buildings to have them, including sports stadiums.”