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

Morning! Unless @KnottyAuty pops on here and corrects me, I think it’s still available - thank you!!

I have time today if there are any left to do - but I think all may be allocated now?If not, let me know!

I think we are all good - just madly data crunching in the background!

But thank you! If we discover a gap, I will let you know…

Hi! I was out and about having to earn a living yesterday (how tedious!) so I will try to transfer all the new data into my table tonight. I will shout if there is anything else to be done on the Midlands...

Otherwise, what do we all think about the next target area?
You could start the research while @TwoLoonsAndASprout and I wrestle the final bits of Midlands data into shape?

We previously discussed Wales but it turns out that @SeaStoat has only just put in the FOIs for there, so it will be at least a month before the first batch of responses come back. So Wales is on hold for now.

So the other options we discussed were:

• South West
• North East & Yorks
• East of England

What do you think?
As we get further through the audit, we probably need to link our findings to other items of news/interest from each area

As @SeaStoat has expressed a preference for East of England I am minded to go for this one next. But also because someone from Essex spoke a last week's Let Women Speak about the terrible situation there with children. I'm sure I am not the only one who feels passionately about that?! It is of interest to many of us and of considerable interest to the wider public. See this video with "ColchesterMum" which starts at about 48m and the charity Outhouse from about 53m: n

But please do flag any situations or other areas which would be good to raise awareness, so we can agree priorities. Thanks!

Sorry that I am unable to pitch in with the work, I am in awe of everyone’s efforts and what has been achieved in these audits.

Regarding next area to tackle: Leeds seems to be a bit of a TRA hotspot. It has biggest teaching hospital in Europe, and it is where NHS England (now winding down I suppose - wonder what jobs the staff will move to?) is headquartered. So perhaps NE and Yorkshire?

I've submitted a new jotform for Lincolnshire partnership

V relaxed about which region we tackle next and extremely happy to go with @SeaStoat 's suggestion. Afterall, without her we wouldn't have much to work with.

Do we want / need to do a strategic review of info we are collecting? Are there any media angles that we need to collate some quant data or evidence to support that we can look for particularly?

As an auditor, I would say that the current jotform is really well organised / contains excellent pointers re search terms and places to look to unearth the content that's there. It seems that many Trusts are bashful about putting this in places that are easy to find with everyday search terms.

I don't mind what we do next. I have a quietish weekend so can make a start if needed.

Just for info here is the list of 22 from East of England so thankfully it is a smaller number than Midlands or London:

Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes

• Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough

• Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust
• Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust
• North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust
• Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Hertfordshire and West Essex

• East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust
• Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust
• Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust
• Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust
• West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust

Mid and South Essex

• Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust
• Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust

Norfolk and Waveney

• James Paget University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Norfolk Community Health & Care NHS Trust
• Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust
• Queen Elizabeth Hospital Kings Lynn NHS Foundation Trust

Suffolk and North East Essex

• East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust
• East Suffolk and North East Essex NHS Foundation Trust
• West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust

Thanks that is a good tip - although based on what we have read activity all seems to have been fever pitch across the country!

I'm inclined to agree - without @SeaStoat we would have very little indeed!

very true! what @SeaStoat has supplied is amazing - Hats off!

I don’t have a preference to where we cover next.

As I’ve learnt more about Annexe B in the last couple of weeks it seems to be that a lot of Trusts have been following this and I wonder if that will be their defence. Although that doesn’t cover the aspect of how difficult it is to find these policies (except for @SeaStoat’s brilliant work) and their claims to be single sex. @KnottyAuty do you know if any journalists are looking into how annexe B came about? Is it all Stonewall?

I think looking into how this all came about is important as is the secrecy the policies are shrouded in (unless the Trust has gone full on gender - and no longer promises single sex accommodation). It has been a process of incremental change presumably starting with replacing “sex” with “gender” when PCs listed and the goal to end with universal single-gender provision. They damn nearly got away with it too.

The Stonewall diversity champions scheme was the vehicle

It would be good to show the trail back to Stonewall et al and find ground zero. Transgender Trend have gone into it in the article below on schools that was shared on another thread. The second half of the article covers how we got here. The passages from Stonewall are eerily familiar (give it a minute for the link to pass the vetting process and show up)

https://www.transgendertrend.com/uk-supreme-court-judgment-schools/

I don't think annex B was Stonewall, I think it might have been GIRES or Press for Change. Stonewall came in with their grift of charging Trusts to change their own policies and get a badge, but the governmental level stuff I don't think was them.Sorry vague, I haven't got access to the stuff I've stashed at work and may be misremembering but the backroom government level deals are more Stephen Whittle's area.

No idea sorry! I would love to see a timeline of key events and personalities sometime as there are so many interconnected parts.

Somewhere in a thread recently someone pointed out to me who it was that introduced Annex B. I meant to link it here, but there were a lot of threads - I think I may have forgotten. I will go and have a hunt!

Ok, it looks like when NHS England committed to single sex accommodation, in (I think) 2010, then Health Secretary Andrew Lansley included in the SSA document an annex, Annex B, that basically said “oh, except trans-identified people can go where they want.”

I will go and do some research - there has been a lot written about it, unsurprisingly.

I'll take mid and south Essex when we're ready to go. Happy to take another if helpful.

Thanks! I’m going to make a few more tweaks to the Jotform and will post shortly 😍

@TwoLoonsAndASprout
Thanks I knew I’d read something too.
Knowing their involvement in the GRA and what Stephen Whittle has previously said on FWR I wouldn’t be surprised if Press for change were involved behind closed doors.
Is there anyway to FOI it? Tagging @SeaStoat in this given her fantastic efforts to date- not suggesting you should do it but wondered if you knew the process.

For personal reasons I’d like to take North West Anglia on the next group.

I think the information is out there (I’m finding lots of references to contemporary controversy) so in the first instance it could just be a case of digging - I’ll start and see what I can find. If it looks like it needs more than I can do, I’ll call in the troops!

But it does make all of this make more sense. The “single sex (but secretly not really)” is baked in to all of the NHS trusts. If they adopted the policy - which I presume they had no option not to do - then it came with the stealth mixed-sex accommodation as a feature, not a bug.

Wow. If you can recall SW being on threads here maybe you could gather up some screenshots and URLs?

I definitely remember SW posting here (and we were talking about this on another thread) but not specifically about this issue. I’ll have a rummage and see what I can find…

Yes exactly, the journalist on Antisocial the other day covered some of this at v high level. So, naturally all Trusts have this duplicitous approach.

I think the strategy of trying to get sunlight on the worst examples of what this looks like in practice is a good one and has yielded some excellent media coverage. I’m trying to think of new angles we can develop to keep the story fresh and developing.

like everyone, I’ve read so much in the last few weeks it’s all blurring together. I feel as if unpicking it to show clearly how each element (bad enough on their own) combines with the others to create the dystopian nightmare that exists today, largely unnoticed by most people (until Dr U started wanging on about sex being a nebulous dog whistle and threatening not to treat patients that did not comply with the ideological orthodoxy).

maybe refocus on the staff changing rooms? I’m rambling now and thinking aloud. I’ll come back if I have any actual ideas to offer rather than musings

Please do ramble! We need to thrash out the ideas together. All contributions help!

I think that specific examples are the most powerful tools we have.

I learned this from my DS’ SEN journey and someone on here telling me “evidence evidence evidence”! So you can thank our hapless local authority plus a mumsnetter on the SEN thread for my nit-picking policy reading skills 🤣

I’d quite like to keep both the patients and staff because if we only look at one we will miss 50% of the spicy quotes. And based on the HOL debate it seems our Parliamentarians had no clue that the sing sex exception wasnt being used anywhere due to coercion.

But reading it all is very wearing so we need to be careful with our sanity. Any suggestions on how to try slimming it down while still proving “no single sex spaces left”?