New council website; "we use gender identity rather than gender reassignment"

[MrsSnippyPants]

Our local councils amalgamated into one big 'super council' as of yesterday, so I thought I would wander about the website and found this under 'Our equality duties under the Equality Act':

"Protected characteristics

The Equality Act introduced the term 'protected characteristics to refer to groups that are protected under the Act, these are:

age
disability
gender reassignment*
marriage and civil partnership
race
religion or belief
sex
sexual orientation

It is important to note that carers are also protected through association to any of the above 9 characteristics.

In addition, due to what we know about our local communities in Dorset we also consider under other socially excluded groups:

people who are rurally isolated
people on low incomes/in poverty
single parents
people with a military background and their families

• Gender reassignment - in Dorset, we use gender identity rather than gender reassignment - ie how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. One's gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth."

Are they allowed to change protected characteristics like this?!

I have sent it and asked for a response via email. 20 working days is the time limit, s allowing for bank holidays that should be the 7th of May.

AverageAvenger Leeds City Council (surprise surprise) is the same. They’ve replaced gender reassignment with transgender. They refuse to budge on it. Say they’re entitled to change it.

They most certainly are not. I've been escalating my complaint to my own council because they've been ignoring it entirely.

Got excellent advice from some brilliant women last week - to let the council know you're taking this to the Ombudsman. I did. Had a reply within 12 hours. Snippy, of the we're allowed to do this type, telling me to ask the EHRC myself because they advised them to change the protected characteristic apparently.

So I did ask the EHRC. Who told me no, it's not legal to change the wording of the protected characteristics. So I duly informed my council of this and then recommended that maybe they should check with EHRC.

Got another snippy reply saying they're looking into this, within the hour followed by an email saying, essentially, fine we'll correct it, now kindly fuck off.

Poor thing. Because now, I'll be sweetly thanking the Equality person and then asking them to change their misrepresentation of the EqA across all of their policies, documentation and website or I will - you guessed it - take it to the Ombudsman.

And well done MrsSnippyPants my emails were not half as good as your query, that was very well formulated. If you dont mind, I'd like to incorporate some of your questions into my correspondence depending on what I find in their publications.

@CharlieParley Worth passing thr information to the Ombudsman anyway. They aggregate information from across all complaints and if there is a pattern of wilful misrepresentation of the law of poor practice quickly rectifying errors, they can make financial penalties and they also publish formal reports into cases upheld.

I'd say one opportunity to rectify and email to the ombudsman asking for an investigation and cc the equalities bod and the chief exec.

Interesting, I did not know that. I shall look into it Becles and let the women who advised me know as well. Just thinking what an uphill struggle this is and all we're asking is for our councils to uphold the law. At least that's two councils that have now corrected their protected characteristics in line with the law. But I'm under no illusion that the underlying issue is anywhere near resolved. [sigh]

Just checked mine. Under 'hate crimes' they say "A hate incident is any incident that is perceived by the victim or any other person as being motivated by the prejudice towards someone’s:
race, colour, nationality or ethnic origin
religion or belief
sexual orientation
disability
or gender identity"

which sounds great (for those that aren't agender) as I thought some areas were still in the stages of trialling sex as a hate crime category (could be wrong on this).

However elsewhere in the document it has the same list but says transgender identity. Bit weird?

My full email. If anyone wants to use or adapt it for their own purposes then feel free.

Please provide answers to the following question and provide all information on the use of 'gender identity' in the council's policies and procedures.

What is the council's legal justification for using 'gender identity' rather than the protected characteristic of gender reassignment in breach of the Equality Act?

What is the legal basis for exposing council tax payers to the extra liability that comes with unilaterally adopting an extra protected characteristic? (Gender identity)

Which outside organisations had input into this decision? Given your adoption of 'gender identity' as a protected characteristic predominantly will affect the safety, dignity, and privacy of women and girls, did you consult with women's groups and if not, why not?

Has an EqIA been carried out in order to discover the impact on women and single sex provisions that the decisions to recognise gender identity as a protected characteristic will have? And if not why not?

Who decided, and how did they take the decision, to link to an inaccurate 'factsheet' on transgender issues? (For instance, it states that gender is identified at birth, which is wrong. SEX is OBSERVED at birth by medical staff). This document is riddled with such beliefs masquerading as facts.

As I am sure you are aware, Stonewall and others mentioned in that 'fact' sheet are lobbying for "gender reassignment" to be replaced with "gender identity" in legislation. It is wholly inappropriate for the council to support their lobbying. How do you square this with the need of local authorities to be politically impartial? (see 1.)

^1. www.gov.uk/government/publications/recommended-code-of-practice-for-local-authority-publicity

2.6 The principle of objectivity requires local authority publicity to be politically impartial. The Publicity Code acknowledges that a council has to be able to explain its decisions and justify its policies, but this should not be done in a way that can be perceived as a political statement or a commentary on contentious areas of public policy.^

They haven't adopted an extra protected characteristic, they have adopted a characteristic that has no basis in law and (presumably) intend to enforce it. Does it conflict with other protected characteristics as actually defined in law? For instance will they allow someone to self define their gender identity to allow access to single sex services/spaces and if so where is the legal advice they were given on the legality of doing so.

I was prompted to take a look at the website again. I still have my FOI request in, but looks like some changes have already been made. Thanks to all who may have given feedback.
Before and after:

Before and after:

Before and after:

Also I can no longer find a link to the 'fact'sheet. Doesn't mean it isn't there, but I can no longer find it easily.

I live in this area. I am incredibly surprised that this slipped through given it is the non wokiest place for miles. Huge Tory voting population, many elderly people as well.

I am glad they made some adjustments and thank you for your efforts.

its a good idea to archive everything at the Wayback machine;

archive.org/web/

Impressive work @MrsSnippyPants and @CharlieParley.

That looks promising. I hope your FOI request is respected.

Email from the council this morning, didn't really address the issues I raised, they DID acknowledge 'gender reassignment' as you can see from my links above. (I gave feedback directly to the pages, not via email). I am still expecting a full answer to my FOI request.

"Thank you for your recent email raising concerns on some of the content on the equality & diversity pages on our Dorset Council website. It was not our intention to not acknowledge gender reassignment, as an organisation we are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion, and consider all of the protected characteristics when making decisions on our services and practices. We work to the Equality Act 2010 and specifically Section 149 the Public Sector Equality Duty, this helps use to make sure our services are fair for all groups. Your concerns raised have led us to review the content of our webpages and as such we have made a number of alterations and thank you for pointing these out."

Anyone else hear anything?

Worth writing to Conor Burns MP? Openly gay, Roman Catholic, friend of Boris who wanted religious freedom guarantees before supporting gay marriage.

Bournemouth is an odd place. Costa geriatrica, but a big student town with large gay and Jewish populations. (And Armenians and some other unexpected communities.) Not as conservative as you might think. Sandbanks for example is both Essex-by-Sea and home to sucessful internet types with young families. The brave and stunning Sophie Cook is from there, with a huge giant poster as you walk into the football club. Enough to put you off their pies.

I manage property down there so am happy to write follow up emails if they dont take appropriate action.

I sent my FOI request into the council on the 4th of April, so by my calculations today is day 20.
According to the council website, "There is a statutory time limit of 20 working days for FOIA and EIR requests to be answered."
I asked for a response via email, so by my reckoning it should arrive by close of business today, at the latest tomorrow, to meet the deadline.

Good work here. It is tedious going through the points but absolutely necessary as this nonsense seems to be being inserted by stealth. Thank you for your administrative zeal.

Thank you Angryresister. It is indeed tedious, but They Who Shall Not Be Named have been inserting all this nonsense into private and governmental bodies' policies for years.
We have a hell of a lot of catching up to do.

Great work there Snippy, I look forward to hearing how they respond. They might say they need more time, but that wouldn't be a bad thing.

Well, the response is in (arrived 10 minutes ago).

I really don't know what to make of it. Looks like I need to ask 'better' questions to get to the bottom of things.

What is the council's legal justification for using 'gender identity' rather than the protected characteristic of gender reassignment in breach of the Equality Act?
What is the legal basis for exposing council tax payers to the extra liability that comes with unilaterally adopting an extra protected characteristic? (Gender identity)

These two questions are not valid questions under the FOIA as they are not asking for recorded information held by the council, instead they are asking for interpretation of legal provisions.

Which outside organisations had input into this decision? Given your adoption of 'gender identity' as a protected characteristic predominantly will affect the safety, dignity, and privacy of women and girls, did you consult with women's groups and if not, why not?

We have no evidence to say which organisations had input into the decision of adopting local protected characteristics. Our experience suggests we would have utilised the Dorset Forum for Equality & Diversity, which brings together equality-focussed organisation to discuss equality and diversity in Dorset, but we have no record of this.

Has an EqIA been carried out in order to discover the impact on women and single sex provisions that the decisions to recognise gender identity as a protected characteristic will have? And if not why not?

No, we are unable to establish if an EqIA was undertaken. Equality Impact Assessments (EqIAs) are undertaken when planning or changing services, policies, strategies, plans, contracting services and planning projects. When an EqIA is undertaken all protected characteristics are considered; this enables us to evidence that we are giving due regard to the public sector equality duty.

Who decided, and how did they take the decision, to link to an inaccurate 'factsheet' on transgender issues? (For instance, it states that gender is identified at birth, which is wrong. SEX is OBSERVED at birth by medical staff). This document is riddled with such beliefs masquerading as facts. As I am sure you are aware, Stonewall and others mentioned in that 'fact' sheet are lobbying for "gender reassignment" to be replaced with "gender identity" in legislation. It is wholly inappropriate for the council to support their lobbying. How do you square this with the need of local authorities to be politically impartial? (see 1.)

This document was produced by the former West Dorset District Council in partnership with the Intercom Trust in approximately 2011. A number of documents were transferred onto the new Dorset Council website, however this document has been removed from the website.

We do not lobby on behalf of Stonewall or any other organisations. We are members of the Stonewall Diversity Champions Programme and participate in the Workplace Equality Index as a benchmarking exercise, so we can better understand how we can support the wider community and our employees.

If you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you may ask for an internal review.

Well done Snippy, thank you for doing this
It's in the nature of the FOI process that if you don't know which document trail to ask for, they can fob you off (often legitimately), but I don't think it's satisfactory for them to say that they don't know whether EqIA was carried out.
If you want to follow it up, you could submit a new request for the EqIA documentation. Don't ask whether it exists - it should exist because the introduction of a new protected characteristic that is not recognised in law constitutes a significant change in local policy.

This FOI request is on a different topic (youth services) but useful as a template:
www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/equality_impact_assessment_youth
Especially this wording: "If the council were not compliant in conducting an Equality Impact Assessment prior to making the decision to cut the youth service then can you please provide me correspondence between Councillors, the CEO, Directors and the Legal department where they were advised this was in line with legislation."