we do allow volunteers’ family members to attend residential events. Such requests are carefully considered by the local commissioner and as a part of the mandatory risk assessment or any trips. However this same process would not apply to a trans girl as this would be a breach of the Equality Act.*
They are saying that the Equality Act legally prevents them from carrying out safeguarding procedures.
There is an awful lot of confusion, -and a lot of rubbish talked- about how the Equality Act applies to this area. I'm a long term lurker on these threads and not anxious to out myself but I - erm - was close to some of the decision making around the framing of this Act and the predecessor Sex Discrimination Act and it's not that complicated.
Basically, the Act works by making it unlawful to discriminate on grounds of a protected charactistic in relation to areas including the provision of services. Two of these protected characteristics are sex (which everyone has) and gender reassignment. A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex. When the Act refers to transsexuals, that is what they mean.
There are then a number of areas set out where it is not unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of specific protected characteristics. The relevant ones are single sex services or separately provided services, which include situations where there are likely to be at least two people present and people of one sex could reasonably object to the presence of people of the opposite sex. (If you want the full description of these exceptions you have to go to Part 7 of Schedule 3 of the Act) -
www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/schedule/3
The important thing is that in all of these situations it is also not unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of gender reassignment. So if you're allowed to exclude a male person you are also allowed to exclude a trans person. And whether or not that person has a Gender Reassignment Certificate is not relevant. A person with a GRC still has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, and is not protected against discrimination in relation to single-sex services.
In my experience of working with the EHRC on aspects of their guidance, they are often inclined to steer it towards what they see as good equality practice rather than being precisely accurate about the letter of the law. If the Girl Guides are getting their advice from organisations like Stonewall or Mermaids, they will be certainly be getting some very dodgy advice about what they are and are not lawfully allowed to do. And any suggestion that they aren't even allowed to safeguard in these areas is bonkers.