Consultation on future access to the Hampstead Heath Bathing Ponds - Closes 25 November 2025

That is an excellent suggestion and one they should have considered and added as a top option, really, as it's the obvious thing to do.

Edited comment to make it less identifiable.

I suggested they gave more thought to how the spaces could be made more trans inclusive while remaining single sex. So how they can ensure transwomen feel safe and welcome in the men's pool

I’ve just filled in the consultation. I mentioned the law several times and that women of any ID have not been allowed in the men’s pond. Our local paper, the campaigning and quite investigative lefty Camden New Journal, only has this tiny little item. Shocking!

Well if that happens enjoy the former men's pond. It is twice the size of the Ladies pond.

Done, bloody ridiculous that they won’t accept as there is a mixed pond that there is no reason to have single sex ones!

Done. Steam coming out of my ears. Have been a very regular ladies pond user for over 30 years. What a sneaky set of questions.

Then they could just use the mixed pond when they're not at work?

That's a worst-case scenario really, OP. But certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility to me. The extent to genderism is so embedded in the Civil Service, the 'lanyard class', whatever you want to say, is a massive factor. The people who have to formulate and make the rules, in every working environment imagineable.

I know which is why I've completed the questionnaire pointing it out

Obviously, but CofL is suggesting otherwise.

Best tell that to City of London Corporation. I just hope they listen this time.

Unfortunately if that occasional man wanders in to express his inner self and his personal reality, there will be women in that women's single sex pool who have to get out and leave to let him do his thing. It's not so bad for the women who can tolerate a mixed sex space, but it's bloody awful for the women who can't and has to immediately get out of the pool and leave when a man decides to exercise his special choosy choices over all three pools and sod everyone else. And she may or may not be having a panic attack and be in an acute state of distress and afraid to risk coming back. This is not ok. Inclusion means a women's space that works for all women.

And that occasional man might be ok, or he might be a user of Malaga Airport and make you uncomfortable or get his equipment out, or he might be Barbie Kardashian in which case God help every woman there. Who knows? The women don't get to choose, he does. He'll pick your experience for you.

It's not ok to treat women in this way. And this spiteful, misogynist tripe of 'if you're going to be snotty about being submissive to some men then you can't have anything at all' needs stamping on hard. Women are not bloody second class citizens, they are not just walking men-enablers, they are not on the planet to give space and stroke men's egos for the benefit of everyone else having a quiet life. These men are going to have to get their heads around the idea that they can identify how they like but they are not women; that women have rights as well as them and equal to theirs; and that they cannot have everything all the time.

I assume with the first option a man could turn up with a full beard dressed in typical men’s clothing saying he IDd as a woman and meet the criteria for entry and in the second he would have to have tried to dress as the sex he emulates or possibly even have a GRC. I don’t see in practice they’d actually be operated differently.

Yes. The men won't want to be arsed with all this, they take no truck with identity as proven several times, and the police will help them. Gender mess is women's work apparently.

But as you say: protect a men's space and legally they are fucked.

Luckily, they will be worried about upsetting the men in the men’s pond if they make all the ponds mixed sex to spite the women (they won’t care about upsetting the women of course, we should be grateful for what they decide to give us). And they can’t make the women’s pond mixed sex but not the men’s unless they want a sex discrimination case against them.

These arrangements have been in place for many years, consistent with the City Corporation’s Gender Identity Policy – adopted in 2019 following a public consultation...

Well, if you consider throwing away thousands of ballot papers, because they went against your illegal agenda a "public consultation."

Have they taken a leaf out of Leonardo's book, on having a show of hands to see if they should ignore the law? FFS!

I'm interested that they are presenting these two options as different:

• That they should continue to be trans-inclusive spaces as currently operated - Under this option the Highgate Men’s Pond would be accessible to all biological men and trans men and the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond would be accessible to all biological women and trans women as at present.

• That they should be trans-inclusive spaces based on how people have decided to live their lives - Under this option the Highgate Men’s Pond would only be accessible to people who have decided to live their lives as men (including trans men but excluding trans women) and the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond would only be accessible to people who have decided to live their lives as women (including trans women but excluding trans men).

What is the difference? Who makes the judgement? I'm not sure what it means to 'live your life as a woman' - might I be excluded despite my sex being female? What is the current system? If the men's pond welcomes people who aren't biologically male and there is no judgement of how anyone lives their life, why have the Man Friday team been excluded?

How were they different?

I don't disagree, but I don't think there is any such thing as a well meaning trans person who would choose to use the single sex spaces when a perfectly good mixed sex alternative is available.

The moment someone of the opposite sex turns up in a single sex space it is by definition no longer single but mixed sex, that's the point!

Would that include someone like Sarah Jane Baker?

I'm just saying I'd rather an occasional trans person who has been living as whatever they think is the opposite gender turns up to what should be a single sex space, than that the single sex space is removed altogether.

However, I don't believe there should be any option other than the single sex spaces reverting to being single sex, as they were originally intended to remain.

And what if they are at work in those times??