Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton, following Employment Tribunal judgment - thread #59

[nauticant]

Judgment was handed down on 8 December 2025:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6936ce28a6fc97b81e57436a/S_Peggie_v_Fife_Health_Board__Dr_Upton.pdf

Sandie Peggie, a nurse at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy (VH), brought claims in the employment tribunal against her employer; Fife Health Board (the Board) and another employee, Dr B Upton. Ms Peggie’s claims are of sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation. Dr Upton claims to be a transwoman, that is observed as male at birth but asserting a female gender identity.

The Employment Tribunal hearing started on Monday 3 February 2025 and was expected to last 2 weeks. However, after 2 weeks it was not complete and it adjourned part-heard. It resumed on 16 July and the last day of evidence was 29 July 2025. It resumed again over 1 to 2 September for closing submissions.

Following handing down of the judgment on 8 December 2025, on 11 December 2025, it was announced by Sandie Peggie and her legal team that they would be pursuing an appeal.

The hearing was live tweeted by x.com/tribunaltweets and there's additional information here: tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-005 and tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-bd6.

Links to previous threads #1 to #50 can be found in this thread: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

Thread 51: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5402652-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-51 1 September 2025 to 2 September 2025
Thread 52: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5403218-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-52 2 September 2025 to 4 September 2025
Thread 53: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5404208-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-53 3 September 2025 to 1 October 2025
Thread 54: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5418690-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-54 28 September 2025 to 21 November 2025
Thread 55: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5447019-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-55 19 November 2025 to 8 December 2025
Thread 56: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5456749-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-56 8 December 2025 to 9 December 2025
Thread 57: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5457132-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-57 9 December 2025 to 11 December 2025
Thread 58: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5458443-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-following-employment-tribunal-judgment-thread-58 11 December 2025 to 12 December 2025

I don't think Kemp is having a break down. It's more likely a combination of arrogance and incompetence. I've come across many a male lawyer in my time who possess this pairing.

If an employer provides separate toilets labelled as women's and men's, and makes it clear that employees are required to use the toilet which corresponds to their biological sex, we can't ask more of them than that - no bouncers outside the loos, as you say
If a biologically male employee persisted in using the women's toilet, despite warnings, wouldn't he be subject to disciplinary action for repeated breach of policy, regardless of whether any women complained or not?

“The” Ben sensibly doesn’t get involved in social media. Agree that Ben 2 is well worth following.

I agree with @MarieDeGournay- I just want all men to be told that they aren’t permitted to use female toilets, and that there may be disciplinary consequences, if they are in the workplace etc, if they knowingly violate this rule.

I keep thinking of that social media faux-concern put-down
U ok hun?
But I hope it's just misogyny and/or incompetence - now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write! - I wouldn't wish a breakdown on anyone.

He's getting a right kicking, a very public one, which must be a new and very uncomfortable experience for him, he deserves every kick of it, he brought it on himself😠

Why require repeated breaches of policy before instigating disciplinary action? Surely a TIM invading the Ladies once is enough? Given the potential for indecent exposure or voyeurism this should be regarded as gross misconduct resulting in instant dismissal.

It doesn't need to be any more complicated than allocating car parking spaces. You just tell people which facility to use and assume they will follow instructions.

Is that going to work with people who openly declare that they won't follow the law? I suppose we could fill toilets with trained attack piranhas.

As a Jeremy Thorpe scholar (we are a small but lively hobby group) it never fails to amuse me that one of his co-defendants in the murder conspiracy trial was John Le Mesurier.

Every article on the subject has to point out that this wasn't the actor from Dad's Army, but a carpet salesman in Cardiff who just happened to have the same unusual name.

I have also come across many male lawyers who combine arrogance and incompetence. But they don't generally flag up their incompetence so obviously by failing to cite or quote cases properly. It's Day 1, Lecture 1 stuff for a law student. It's such a departure from everything that legal training and practice drums into you that I wonder how on earth he thought he could get away with it unless he wasn't in his right mind.

Is that going to work with people who openly declare that they won't follow the law?

Would be interested in the opinion of the lawyers on this thread, but wouldn't that be grounds for dismissal?

One suspects that employers probably have to wait for a policy to be thwarted by action, rather than simply a statement of intention to do so being made.

Now that is a coincidence!
And nominative determinism for a man called Le Mesurier who measured carpets for a living😄

That’s what I find surprising - every statement was written in longhand, every witness asked to pause and slow down (and don’t start me on Jane Russell’s painfully slow, precise diction). We had those days of pouring over the doctor being difficult know-it-all over just about every question asked of him and argue about the meaning of just about every word used, the delays caused by NHS Fife having to be told to hand over everything not just the bits they wanted to hand over. And all that for what? To have the school work experience student cobble up something on ChatGPT for the Judge to sign off? Omnishambles is the polite term for it, shitshow is what I’d call it. Thank heavens for Tribunal Tweets, and for the ability to see this broadcast for myself otherwise, I’d have no clue of just how awful this whole process was. Thankfully the Judgement being so obviously substandard has opened the eyes of those who refused to believe it could have been as obvious as it was to those of us who tuned in.

I mean, how the hell did the Judge come to the conclusion Upton was reliable after all the evidence re the falsification of records and the made up patient safety claim?! Or that Isla Bumba was a reliable and credible witness?

I can only assume he had his fingers in his ears and his eyes were painted on and he got the school work experience lad in to rustle up a judgement for him. For the sake of having some confidence in the system, there needs to be some serious consequences from this.

I used to work in IT, a male-dominated profession. A male colleague casually mentioned one day that he'd gone into the ladies toilets the previous evening, after working hours (overtime), just for a look. He seemed amused to find a makeup bag on the windowsill. It struck me as an odd thing to do (I'd never thought of going into the gents, 'just for a look'!), but it didn't seem to me to reach the level of gross misconduct. If he'd done it in the middle of the day I might have thought otherwise.
I think this is one of those 'if a tree falls and nobody hears it' situations.

Yes. You would have to follow a fair process before getting that far, but if you make it clear to staff that they must use the facilities that align with their biological sex and an employee refuses, they can be dismissed. I'm not sure if you would be able to treat a single incident as gross misconduct, or whether you would need multiple incidents. but you can certainly stop them from continually flouting your instructions. My only note of caution would be whether they would have a case against their employer if they failed to provide a mixed sex facility, i.e. a lockable room with a toilet and washing facilities inside.

A Le Mesurier of carpets you say?

Are you not just pulling our legs?

Bah! Beaten by@MarieDeGournay!

I think that is likely to be right. You can warn an employee for stating an intention, but I suspect that dismissing them before they have acted is likely to be an unfair dismissal.

I can never follow the logic of having to provide a mixed sex space -as there are only two sexes, even according to the law, why is it not enough to provide a segregated toilet for each sex = 2?
If the SC ruling is applied widely enough, that means for each biological sex, regardless of feelings or GRCs or anything else, and as there isn't a third biological sex, why a third toilet?

I agree.

I once worked for a company where the entire population of one of the buildings they occupied was male. The building had female toilets downstairs, male toilets upstairs. The employees all worked downstairs, with the top floor only being used occasionally for meetings. Most of the employees in that building used the ladies toilets rather than go upstairs for the gents. I think it would have been difficult to class that as gross misconduct.

I have always assumed that it counters the concern that requiring the use of a third space automatically outs someone, thus breaching their article 8 right to privacy. If it is mixed sex, no one can reasonably infer anything about the sex of the people who use it.

Great minds, nauticant, great minds😄
You can probably pronounce it better than me - I just can't help defaulting to the French pronunciation, which I know is not right, and it makes me sound pretentious.
Pretentious - moi? [that's a quotation from Miss Piggy]😁

I think it may be possible for trans-identifying individuals to argue that, if employees are required to use the facilities that match their biological sex and there is no mixed sex facility, this amounts to discrimination against them. It seems to me that some of the recent judgements point in that direction.

While you might not be able to infer anything about their sex, (it could be argued that) you could infer something about their gender reassignment status. That might engage a privacy concern.

Hmmmm yes I see, thank you and Raquelos for explaining it for me.
I'm not convinced, but I accept the points made, it's just that my alt.username could be keeptoiletssimple😄because it seems to me that the long-established configuration of women's, men's and accessible is what already existed in most buildings, and works for 99.97% of the population.

The adjustments that 16m disabled people in the UK can demand are legally limited to what is 'reasonable', so I believe that the adjustments that 0.03% of the population demand in venues and workplaces should also be limited to what is 'reasonable' - is demanding their own toilets, everywhere, 'reasonable' or disproportionate?