NHS trust let trans doctor use single-sex changing room without asking regulator

Telegraph

17-03-2025

An NHS board gave a transgender doctor access to a female changing room without consulting regulators about laws that protect women's safe spaces at work, The Telegraph can reveal.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) confirmed it had held no discussions with NHS Fife about the regulations that require employers to provide separate sex changing facilities.
A Freedom of Information request said the regulator had held no talks with the health board dating back to at least July 2023 about the the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992.
These state that changing rooms and toilets will not be suitable 'unless they include separate facilities for, or separate use of facilities by, men and women where necessary for reasons of propriety'.
The following month, August 2023, Dr Beth Upton started work at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy. The medic was born male but self-identifies as a woman.
Dr Upton told an employment tribunal that use of the female changing room was agreed with a supervisor. NHS Fife has accused nurse Sandie Peggie of misconduct after she challenged the presence of Dr Upton in the women-only area.
This included an incident in which the nurse needed to use the changing rooms urgently due to heavy menstrual bleeding.
Dr Upton is understood not to have had a gender recognition certificate at the time.
The tribunal heard that the health board acted on the advice of an equalities officer rather than lawyers. The officer was said to have insisted that Dr Upton had a 'right' to access the female changing room as the medic 'identifies as a woman'.
Public authorities failing staff
Lisa Mackenzie, of policy analysts Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, said the HSE was responsible for enforcing the 1992 regulations.
She said: 'It is striking, therefore, that senior managers at NHS Fife do not appear to have sought advice from the HSE regarding the provision of single-sex facilities for their employees, preferring instead to place the weight of providing advice on an inexperienced diversity officer.
'The failure of public authorities to provide single-sex spaces for their employees leaves them open to the risk of litigation, as we are seeing with NHS Fife – a cost the public purse can ill afford.'
Ms Mackenzie asked HSE to provide copies of all correspondence with NHS Fife about the enforcement of the regulations since July 1, 2023 – the month before Dr Upton started work at the hospital.
However, HSE responded last week that a search of its paper and electronic records had yielded no results and it had established that it did not hold any such correspondence.
The disclosure comes after the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) wrote to the health board to 'remind' it of its obligations about the provision of single-sex spaces.
Baroness Kishwer Falkner, the commission's chairwoman, highlighted the 1992 regulations and asked for a 'copy of any equality impact assessment relating to the provision of changing facilities for staff'.
But it was reported last month that the health board had failed to conduct any such assessment, in what experts said was a 'very serious' breach of its legal obligations.
Dr Michael Foran, of the University of Glasgow, also said the definition of 'woman' for the purposes of the 1992 regulations did not include trans people who self-identified as women.