Respond to the EHRC Consultation; Sex Matters Guidance is out. Deadline is 30th June

[MsGoodenough]

Apologies if there's a thread already but I couldn't see one. It's incredibly important that lots of people who understand sex respond to the consultation as there will be lots of responses from the other side! Sex Matters have issued guidance here

This could be a place to discuss our responses as well. Deadline Monday 30th June.

For anyone who has missed the deadline, it is still possible to submit feedback in Welsh. It says entries in English will be discarded from now on, but it doesn't say how grammatically correct the Welsh has to be. I'm sure you know an automatic translator that could help...😎

Did last evening with 45 minutes to spare.

Ah yes - that makes sense now. Many thanks

So the consultation isn’t about gathering opinions, it’s about gathering info, examples and perspectives that will be useful in developing practical guidance and implementation.
That is where I focused my answers so hopefully useful and it makes me more confident that emotional input from TRAs is not going to sway it very much 🤞

If anyone missed the deadline to fill in the consultation or would like to give more info would an email to EHRC still be worthwhile or was yesterday a hard stop to the consultation period?

I’ve not been involved in many consultations before, so it’s really useful to understand how it all works

I talked a lot about how I felt their examples weren't very useful or clear, Largely because of the sex-deceptive, non-standard English, activist language but also because sex is in most cases immediately obvious and pretending it's not is part of the problem, so hopefully that was the right approach!

Honestly, every consultation I've done has gone into a black hole and seemingly achieved nothing - I spent ages on the draft guidance for schools which has just disappeared for political reasons even though was largely very good and thorough and centred child safeguarding - so not feeling very hopeful. I don't know if they genuinely care about responses or if it's just a performative tick box consultation that doesn't change anything.

I talked about how much of what is being talked about (for toilets of course) doesn’t make sense. Eg. The examples of lockable/secure cubicles is misleading as they have to be able to be easily opened from the outside for safety reasons.And they have on unsuspecting women.
By adding unisex stuff adhoc it goes against building regs, other legislation, safeguarding etc. which has taken decades to produce.
And the fact no one has risk assessed these designs for the deaths and assaults that are far, far more likely to happen in an enclosed private space, when it comes to responsibilities to keep employees/customers/pupils safe eg in
Health and Safety 1974. And the fact no one can actually agree what services are wanted anyway and it wasn’t even on the radar in 2008 (big government loo report) so what’s changed? Safety responsibilities and needs towards all occupants (single sex toilets with door gaps) rather than wants.

Sounds easy when I condense it but I did it in the context of the questions and critiqued examples.

You'll be pleased to hear I also made some of these points!

I said that the EA2010 needs to balance pcs and the suggestion of getting rid of single sex shared toilets in favour of only single lockable cubicles in order to accommodate trans people is far less safe and will result in a higher risk of death or harm for people such as those at risk of epilepsy / stroke / heart attack.

I find it actually quite breathtaking that the suggestion is not to have an extra unisex toilet for the small number of trans people who don't want to use single sex toilets according to their sex but that they are suggesting getting rid of safe toilets for the rest of the 99% of the population just in case trans people feel slightly sad they can't use opposite sex toilets any more. When is this madness going to end?

Sex Matters response to the consultation

"It is notable that while the Supreme Court has quashed the idea that sex is difficult to define, instead of going back to its earlier simplicity, the EHRC is now proposing to expand the code in a different way, namely by suggesting that single-sex services are fiendishly difficult to justify.

We think that the current draft of the code is over-elaborate and leaves the door open to the idea that people who identify as transgender can aspire to use opposite-sex spaces.

Rather than adding more detail to the code, we think a better approach would be to scale it back with fewer examples and greater simplicity and clarity, and with statements that clearly reflect statute or case law."

https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/the-ehrc-code-of-practice-should-stick-to-the-law/

My feedback suggested that there needed to be greater clarity that providing a single sex facility does not have to be painstakingly justified by a provider. Dignity and privacy are enough of a legitimate aim.

TRA Reddit gleeful over the reported 50,000 responses.

Interesting - how do they know?

Just for once, because they've checked a proper source: https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/media-centre/news/consultation-updates-services-code-practice-closes

Scenes.

Yes, from the Transgender UK subreddit:

"The EHRC have received over 50,000 responses (complete and partial) to the 6-week public consultation on the new code of practice following the Supreme Court ruling. They absolutely never expected to get this many, and huge well done to everybody who submitted."
^^https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/media-centre/news/consultation-updates-services-code-practice-closes^^
For comparison, the 12 week public consultation that the EHRC ran on their three-year strategic plan received just over 2000 responses. This is 25 times as many in half the time.
And there are still two more weeks for people to submit in Welsh."

They have a busy summer reviewing all the responses.

Sounds a bit like the toilet consultation 2021 on steroids. To be fair Stonewall did such a good job dominating that one that the results came out that only 2% were in favour of disabled toilet provision.
https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for-evidence/toilet-provision-for-men-and-women-call-for-evidence/outcome/toilet-provision-for-men-and-women-call-for-evidence-analysis-of-responses-received

I expect they’ll be using AI to do it. I just can’t see them sitting down and reading them all

Not quite sure why they're so excited - for one thing, they won't know how many responses are from TRAs and how many are from "TERFs". And for another, it's not a referendum - it's the content of the submissions that will matter. If the ones from TRAs are all just yelling about how it's all wrong as TWAW and they should be allowed to use opposite-sex spaces etc etc, or just disagreeing with everything, that's not going to get them anywhere, as it won't change the SC ruling...

If anyone missed the deadline to fill in the consultation or would like to give more info would an email to EHRC still be worthwhile or was yesterday a hard stop to the consultation period?

It was a hard stop to submissions in English by any route.

Submissions in Welsh will be accepted until 11.59pm on 15 July 2025 because the Welsh language survey did not go online until two weeks after the English version.

“By the 11.59pm deadline on Monday 30 June, a total of 25,825 completed responses and a further 25,774 partial responses to the English-language survey were received.”

What are partial responses? I don’t remember some intermediate state of submission?

If you clicked “no comments on this section” or however that was phrased, does that make it a “partial” response?

What are partial responses? I don’t remember some intermediate state of submission?

It maybe that people who started responding, saved intending to come back but then didn't, will have the bits they did complete included.

The submit at the end was as much about not being able to go back and edit or add to comments.

Just out of interest did anyone complete the bit saying you would be happy to be contacted for follow up?!

The consultation was about how clear the ruling was; not the legitimacy of it.
Ultimately it will act as a guide on how to give clear advice to organisations on how to implement the ruling.

I did!

Some people will not have responded to every question. There was no compulsion to do so.

Indeed, it pointed out in bold on every page that it wasn’t necessary to answer all.

Nobody said they should. In which case they would have got to the end and clicked on submit.

However, partial responses would mean the submit button had not been clicked, because people intended to return and complete but didn't.

But suggests the bits they had complete by the deadline are being included.

It was on how clear the proposed updated EHRC Code of Practice is, which will BE the advice given to organisations - not the ruling.

Sorry, yes......it was about clarity of communication, not legitimacy.