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

Check out this explanation of how the Rainbow Badges scheme works. The young doctor doing the presentation seems really nice and well intentioned. Totally oblivious to how offensive some of this content might be to women but it’s a tick box exercise that he’s following and feeling very happy to be helping his community. I feel really torn posting this because he seems nice but misguided:

sorry I’m struggling to get this link to work. You need to search on HealthwatchWorcestershire on YouTube. Title: LGBT+ Experiences of Health & Social Care Services 2020 response - Dr Luke Simonds (he/him)

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Correct. There have been some where they have no policy (or none that we can find, or none that they are willing to provide in the face of an FOI), and under 5 where there are mealy-mouthed concessions that their policies might upset some people (though interestingly, I don’t think I’ve seen any that suggest that their policies might make some religious women unable to use their services - that is, religion being a reason for wanting actual single sex spaces does not seem to come into it), but all that we have found have mixed-sex spaces by stealth.

@Peregrina, I should point out that this is entirely unsurprising, because from @GreenAllOver’s investigations into the history of this whole thing, we know that these policies were imposed from on high. This is not a matter of individual trusts or individual HR managers, this is the institution of healthcare in the UK as a whole that has pushed these policies.

But it’s yet to be discovered which minister signed it off… watch this space…

@KnottyAuty You were asking about newspapers in the Midlands? I'm a Midlands lass and I would say the main ones with the biggest readership are the Birmingham Mail, Leicester Mercury and the Nottingham Post.

Some of the key guidance was published on 31 December - an unusual time to publish, and one when Ministers wouldn’t have been around.

I think it’s possible that none of this was actually signed off by Ministers at all. Or maybe only signed off in the sense that they ‘agreed’ a massive pack of papers without reading every single word…

If so, then that’s a pretty horrifying undermining of democratic accountability.

@KnottyAuty thinking about fresh news angles for the nationals based on all regions completed so far, how about the children and the high number that override parental rights “irrespective of Gillick competence”?

I know this is less universal and will affect fewer people, but it is directly opposed to Cass in relation to social transitioning. I’ve recently been on the wrong end of it with one of my DC’s having any autism assessment with a private provider under Right To Choose. I had a complaint letter already to go (once we had the report) as I innocently thought they were not acting in line with NHS protocol as NHS England had accepted the Cass Report- now I know the private provider could conceivably have been told to act in the way they did to conform to NHS policy. I will have to redraft my complaint!

I think it is shocking that children who have had no formal assessment or diagnosis can be treated as the opposite sex against their parents wishes in an NHS setting post Cass.

I think The Tmes, Telegraph, Mail may write about this using the audit data and some of the more horrific policy quotes to jus it up a bit

@Cantunseeit, one of our Telegraph articles was about the Gillick competence issue - hold on, let me find the link…

@Cantunseeit, it’s this one:

25th April: The Telegraph: Teenage boys allowed on girls' hospital wards under NHS gender rules
https://archive.ph/Iyblu

Thanks- I must have missed that one! So much fab coverage

But @Cantunseeit, the principal behind your idea is a really good one - are there more specific issues (like the Gillick competence, or the mental health one recently) that we can pull out to highlight?

and the high number that override parental rights “irrespective of Gillick competence”?

This is the bit which truly shocks me. The "adults" involved know that the children are not competent to make decisions. And where will those adults be when the children find out what has happened to them? They will be nowhere to be seen, while it will be the parents left to try to pick up the pieces for their children.

The timing of the publication sounds so much like they wanted it done when no one was around to see what they were doing, doesn’t it?

How about digging into the rainbow badge scheme and its links to Stonewall if that hasn’t already been covered? The examples of assessment reports we’ve seen are really something else:

• encouraging Trusts to break the law on SS provisions for staff and patients
• erasing women by insisting on “gender neutral language” so no use of “mother” by maternity depts
• the sheer cost of it all - staff surveys and huge, badly written, reports demanding policy changes so absorbing huge amounts of senior time

Thanks! Any suggestions on specific reporters? Dm me if can think of any

I’ll do you

These adults are like a revolving door of random professionals - they never stick around. Drives me mad! I can’t imagine how much more difficult it is with gender issues in the mix. @Cantunseeit i think this is an interesting story

Defo one for the future but no one’s bitten on that so far. It’s taken a long time for Stonewall to be considered faintly whiffy. I don’t think that public understanding is quite there on the bureaucracy element… which of course is exactly how it was so successful 🙄

Ok so chatting with @TwoLoonsAndASprout earlier we will do a review today and see how things are going.

But we’ve completed East of England, London, Midlands and (let’s assume) North East and Yorkshire, with the addition of Scotland. That leaves North West, South East and South West, plus Wales.

@SeaStoat is having a torrid time with the Welsh FOIs so they aren’t ready yet.

So any preference on where to head next?
North West, South East or South West?

So any preference on where to head next?
North West, South East or South West?

How about the South East? Not only will it cover Brighton but the proximity to London may get us more interest in the media.

Sounds good to me! Can I cheekily ask if you could search up a list of their trusts please 😊?

Might you be up for a bit of thread wrangling while I wrestle with East of England and @TwoLoonsAndASprout finishes off North East? (No worries if not but we could probably do with a bit more help if anyone else fancies)

The influence of Rainbow Ribbons, which seems so benign to the casual user, is interesting. It requires involvement of a senior management at the feedback meeting. Commitments would be made, for example to remove sex based language at those meetings. So no evidence assessment of the impact of the polices being pushed by the LGBT Foundation. My local hospital trust was on the pilot, and is now 100% captured with the progress flag being flown throughout the year.

My final two North East ones - the ambulance trusts are done and submitted. Almost nothing found - they're getting very clever about removing material, aren't they? - but they're members of Rainbow Badges and enough mentions of policies, even if you can't actually see them, to make the capture pretty obvious.

Sorry for the delay. On to the next region!

The policy at my Trust is that patients are put on wards of their "preferred gender" even when the patient is a child and the parents disagree. If other patients aren't comfortable with it, staff are instructed to tell them there are no opposite sex people there and everyone is on the correct ward.

They're proud of their "inclusive" policy.

To be fair, any trusts without in patient accommodation has a dearth of info because staff facing policy is rarely on the website.