NI health trusts issue ‘trans pass’ for women’s toilets and changing rooms

Men who identify as women should be allowed to use female staff’s facilities, health trusts in Northern Ireland have stated.

Documents issued by all five trusts – Belfast, Northern, Southern, Western, and South Eastern – said that “it is not acceptable” to bar men who self-identity as women from ladies’ single-sex spaces such as toilets and changing rooms.

In Scotland, nurse Sandie Peggie is taking legal action after NHS Fife disciplined her for objecting to the presence of a man who purports to be a woman in a staff changing room.

Pro-trans policies

Trust policies on ‘single sex toilet facilities’, seen by the Belfast News Letter, make clear that once staff members identify as ‘transgender’, they should not be required to “use the facilities of the sex assigned to them at birth or the accessible/disabled toilet”.

All the trusts indicate that, “while every effort should be made to deal with concerns amongst staff”, once a person “begins the process of changing gender identity they will use the appropriate facilities of their new gender”.

In some circumstances, the policies warn, insisting that a biologically intact man should only use the gents or a unisex disabled toilet “could amount to unlawful discrimination”.

The health trusts also back the shared use of other sex-based facilities by a ‘transgender person’, including showers, sleeping accommodation and changing facilities.

Tribunal

Sandie Peggie, a nurse with 30 years’ experience, was reprimanded, investigated, and suspended for objecting to sharing NHS Fife’s female changing rooms with Dr Upton, a man who identifies as a woman.

NHS Fife’s HR department – in the name of ‘inclusivity’ and respecting someone’s self-declared gender identity – defended the right of the male-bodied doctor to be present while Mrs Peggie and other female members of staff changed for work.

In May 2024, she brought an action before an employment tribunal against NHS Fife and Dr Upton for sexual harassment and for discrimination over her recognition of biological reality.

The first phase of the hearing in the case concluded in February and is set to resume in July.