NHS Policy Audit - working party - thread #2

[KnottyAuty]

This is a thread about “keeping the receipts” on NHS Policies prior to the Supreme Court ruling on 16th April 2025.

Our working theory is that there were no single sex spaces for NHS Staff or Patients in the entire country before that date, having all been removed by stealth. We are aiming to prove this by auditing websites and policies for all the UK trusts and using the results to raise public awareness. As well as recording what has happened historically, the information will form a baseline so we can check which Trusts comply or defy the judgement in due course.

We are working around the country region by region. If you fancy getting involved in a bit of grassroots feminism then please do join in to help!? Each trust takes about an hour to research and you can upload online without giving any personal details away. Comment below and we can give you the link to an online survey - it changes for each region.

Thanks soooo much to all the vipers who have helped so far and @ Twoloons for doing a great job with the thread wrangling!

Here are the press articles we’ve managed to generate so far:

Scotland:
25th March: The Telegraph
https://archive.is/dTUhY
26th March: Scottish Daily Express
https://archive.is/kaLCB
26th March: The Telegraph
https://archive.is/iSD9m

London:
21st April: The Telegraph
https://archive.is/awGuz
23rd April: The Telegraph (in conjunction with another thread by NHS mumsnetters)
https://archive.is/1DO8d

Original thread #1 here:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5291237-nhs-policy-audit-working-party?page=1

Sorry - I realise I am spamming the thread with links to historic docs (which you may already have on the Annex B jotform). A couple of extras that may narrow the gap down

Same-sex accommodation: your privacy, our responsibility Seventeen principles have been developed to ensure each organisation delivers the highest standards of privacy and dignity within all areas of a hospital, other trusts and providers. (Sept 2009) Includes transgender to be treated as their gender presentation.

So, do we think the May 2009 chief nurse doc (with its Annex E) was the first time the idea of transgender people being treated on the ward that aligns with their gender identity was published?

A couple of other points of interest (to me anyway!):
The October 2008 Christine Burns doc Trans A Practical Guide shared by Knotty upthread doesn't seem to be advocating putting transgender patients on the wards reflecting their gender identity (based on searching the doc and a quick skim - I haven't read it all. I was also surprised by this point from p61- my bold - bet NHS Fife wishes they'd thought of that now:
"If it is genuinely impossible to adapt locker or shower facilities in order to accommodate a pre-operative member of staff in a state of undress, then this is one very limited example of an instance where the law permits an employer to make separate arrangements. It is highly unlikely that the employee concerned would object to this pre-operatively."

Happy to be allocated, I can take on another couple for now

Me too! What @TwoLoonsAndASprout said!

Any mentions of Outhouse spotted yet in the East of England trusts please?

Excellent! Your pick-n-mix prize is:

• Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust
• Queen Elizabeth Hospital Kings Lynn NHS Foundation Trust

And thank you!

Also @Cantunseeit, please keep spamming! If we have seen it no one will be offended to see it again. If we haven’t seen it, we definitely won’t be offended, quite the opposite!

I have just submitted East and North Herts. I still have Herts Community trust to do hopefully tomorrow.

Thanks! I’m going to pick up all the comments and pms at the weekend - life has got busy, but I’ll add everything to the Annex E jotform then and work through the content, and then summarise where I’ve got to.

Brilliant! Can’t believe how much you’ve already stacked in there!

I can do East of England Ambulance.

Brilliant - thank you!

I haven't spotted any yet although, I confess I didn't look specifically for that in the last couple. I'll go back and check

In Cambridgeshire and Peterborough area, you'd probably need to look out for Kite Trust. You did not hear this from me.

Not sure if any of you have come across a completed Rainbow Badge assessment report on your travels. I've just been having a peek at my first one and I have no words

NHS Rainbow Badge Report Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust.pdf

Hmm. If a student of mine had handed in a piece of work with that number of spelling and grammatical errors, I would have quietly handed it back.

Just for starters.

The thought of the amount of time that has been put into creating that pile of tripe absolutely boils my piss. And their patient responses are based on SIX responses. Utterly pathetic.

Kite trust is top of the list of 'External support / organisations that may be useful' in the 'supporting gender transitioning at work' policy from Cambridge University Hospitals Foundation Trust. Stonewall are bottom of the list (they are a Stonewall Diversity Champion), with various similar organisations in between. Affirmation all the way. No Outhouse though.

There's absolutely loads of pro-trans stuff. Can't find ANY pro-woman stuff yet nor anything specifically about single sex accommodation. On the webpage it says there are single sex wards but as the documents reveal these are in fact mixed sex as anyone with a gender identity MUST be allowed to go wherever they want.

It's extremely unbalanced and very clearly very far from fulfilling the equality duty which hilariously they quote on a page about EDI which is over 50% about LGBTQ+ (a bit about disability but massively overshadowed by the Stonewall stuff and a glancing mention of other pcs - but no sex).

Honestly, given the policies I'd be tempted to be trans in that environment - as apparently you'd get to do what you want with no criticism and there is a very clear hierarchy on display.

Just come across this bit on how they'd treat children being admitted in terms of accommodation:

If upon admission the child or young person is unconscious or incapacitated then, in the first instance, inferences should be drawn from presentation and mode of dress, with consent obtained as soon as is reasonably practicable.

Or maybe just ask their parents what sex they are in order to safeguard them rather than putting girls wearing jeans and a T-shirt in with the boys? FFS.

Oh yes Ive seen one of those in the Midlands. it’s quite a thing isn’t it?

Oh, it’s worse than that. Most trusts have a statement that says that children should be accommodated according to their chosen gender identity even if they are not Gillick competent - that is, even if tests have shown that they are not mature enough to understand the consequences of their choices.

The Rainbow Badge report I posted is from a mental health trust which until recently CQC rated “inadequate”, there is so much wrong with that report/process from SPAG and time taken (58 pages!) when the patients are so very vulnerable and the Trust on its knees. No need even to get into the content but oh boy 🥺

Cambridge University Hospital Trusts didn't get a Rainbow Badge award at the end of 2023 (partly because some departments just refused to fill in the forms because presumably they had actual patient care to do instead and this was not a good use of their time). They thankfully still have some sane staff despite their policies as this unintentionally hilarious report from Varsity shows:

Cambridge University Hospitals staffed by ‘bigots and sexists’ | Varsity

Excerpts below - but if you want to avoid reading the rest obviously it makes clear all of the comments from realist staff are bigoted.

The staff survey revealed controversy about the assessment among staff with one calling the Rainbow Badges “performative”, while another called the scheme “mindless virtue signalling”. Others expressed their concern about the influence of the Rainbow Badge scheme on the Trust.
One staff response to the assessment said: “I am gravely concerned about the influence on the NHS of organisations like Mermaids and Stonewall.” Another staff member said that they are “concerned this has now come to Addenbrooke’s”.
Staff expressed their opinions on the scheme and the encouragement of inclusive language within the Trust. One commented: “Isn’t it dangerous for the NHS to start eroding normal language.”
Some staff used the survey to complain about the scheme, one saying: “Stop imposing it on me” and another commenting that “LGB staff [should] not [be] subsumed by [the] T.”
Others used the survey to express their own views on LGBT+ inclusive policy. One member of staff said they “can’t even state a simple and undeniable biological fact that there are only two genders"
They continue by saying that the “LGBT community is riddled with phobias and it is the most discriminatory and intolerant community that I’ve encountered.””.

In the supporting gender transitioning staff policy it says
DON’T: -Question a trans person's assessment of whether an incident was transphobic or not.

So literally you could say 'Hi' and if a trans member decides they don't like the way you say that, that's transphobic (and elsewhere it says anything transphobic may be a hate crime). Reminiscent of Peggie vs Fife.

Needless to say the staff with all the sensible comments above are those who I would prefer as my HCPs.

These poor, poor staff. The reporter must be slightly GC because obviously normally those comments would be airbrushed from history.

@thenoisiesttermagant that is brilliant! We should include a copy of that article with the trust’s audit!

@TwoLoonsAndASprout - don't worry it's in my file...

This one will take a while though because despite delaying bedtime and allowing my children to watch too much TV, there is a VERY rich seam of sexism and sex deception by the Trust to be mined.

Apart from anything else, this shit isn't healthy for trans people. It positively encourages them into unhealthy, bullying behaviours. To be able to label literally any behaviour you don't like as bigoted and a potential crime? Insane encouraging of toddler levels of resilience. How can they possibly do staff appraisals?

@thenoisiesttermagant:

Apart from anything else, this shit isn't healthy for trans people. It positively encourages them into unhealthy, bullying behaviours. To be able to label literally any behaviour you don't like as bigoted and a potential crime? Insane encouraging of toddler levels of resilience.

And it’s the result of that pandering to every whim that we’re seeing now - huge, adult-toddler temper tantrums.

For the ambulance trusts don't worry about the patient single sex. It is excluded as there are ano wards - just put "N/A as there is no in-patient accommodation" into that section of the form. Cheers!