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

Yes. Exactly.

I’ve certainly never thought of doing that!

I can see single-user changing rooms being used by a handful of non-trans people too. Organisations will have to do some calculations to decide how many they might need and there will be lots of wailing over cost. No doubt the tax payer will pick up a lot of that tab.

To be honest I don’t think the solution is that they use the disabled loos. Even if every organisation in the country was made to put in an additional disabled loos or call it all-inclusive. Firstly they can’t change in there and in many ways the changing room issue is worse than the loo issue ie. People having to dress and undress in changing rooms. Trans Identifying men need to use the loo / changing rooms that are designated for their biological sex that is the only solution that works. They are men let the men deal with it rather than pushing it onto either women or disabled people.

Possibly if that becomes law we would lose about half of them anyway if accessing women’s spaces was their main incentive.

I think if GR wasn’t a PC in its own right, and had to rely on religion and belief, the way the manifestations of that belief have been exercised and the impact on the rights of others eg women and gay and lesbian people, it wouldn’t meet the Grainger criteria to be WORIADS

You mean accessible loos per capita of disabled people, versus single-sex loos per capita of non-disabled people, yes?

@selffellatingouroborosofhate
Yes. My precision of expression is good enough for a Scottish judgment, but not much else!

The additional single-user room (an ambulant toilet or changing room, as needed) allows society to draw a line under this issue and move on. It would make it much harder for trans-identified males banished from women's spaces to claim discrimination, breach of their human rights etc and it also makes the GC 'side' seem reasonable and accommodating. In other words, it will be hard to argue against, and the public will be a bit more cynical of those males who do argue to stay with the women.

Perish the thought.

so many companies won’t have the space or the funding to do that. And the trans identifying men say it would ‘out’ them and therefore be discriminatory against them so it would be back to start anyway. What needs to happen is that the establishment - government courts public bodies need to stand up to them and say this is the way it will be - you will use the facilities for your biological sex as the Supreme Court supposedly already has. Everyone is just scared of them apart from the insane people who really believe they are actually women.

There are the well known TIM’s who believe (or profess to believe) that they are some kind of woman and that the operations they have gone through, and the promise that they thought that the GRA gave to them, meant they would be fully integrated in to womanhood both socially and legally.

And then the rest who just think that they can be women because they say so.

none of them are going to accept third spaces.

As far as i am concerned there are two sexes, and there only need to be separation based on that fact.

I agree. Along with the fact that it is not logistically possible or desirable for every single toilet block in the land to have to accommodate an additional one just because of men who would not be satisfied with that anyway. They will only be satisfied when they are allowed in the women’s.

I think there will be issues in smaller organisations but disabled provision caused problems too and I am confident that society can work this out. The 'outing' issue is really not society's problem. Life 'outs' you in many ways: some disabilities, your age, pregnancy, skin colour etc

I'm a pragmatist. I want this issue dealt with in a way that draws a firm line under it and doesn't allow for a constant undercurrent of wailing. 'Poor TW forced to use the Gents' makes a much better headline then 'Poor TW forced to use the single-user space'. The issue dies when the publicity dies and when the politicians can tell the lobby groups that they have bent over backwards and done their best for them.

I do wonder sometimes if there is any mileage in changing the PC of GR to the PC of gender non-conformity

Ouch.

"Kemp’s 2020 book on case law contains advice that would appear pertinent to the difficulty in which he has become embroiled"

What he seems to have done is turn in a judgment that displays a surprisingly poor grasp of the relevant law & a very novel approach to hs authorities. As more of the errors came to light I became less inclined to believe that he'd been using an LLM. LLM's don't chop out the first few lines of a para in judgment & crowbar them together with an apparently helpful bit of obiter remarks in order to make a point. They don't know how, they don't know when they're making a point. A human mind did that & not one I would trust in a judicial role, nor yet as a solicitor advocate.
Were I Kemp, blaming "AI" (an LLM) would seem the least humiliating account of this farrago.

Edited for dyslexia, some may remain.

God, no! That would artificially inflate their consituency even more than including part-time cross-dressers & drag acts.

This may seem harsh, but I am really resistant to telling young people with neon hair and septum piercings that they have a protected characteristic.

@Binglebong I didn't see it either and also, looking back, I still can't see it all in a way that makes sense. I think lots of us saw what we wanted to see and there was always a greater chance of a disappointing outcome that I was prepared to believe. But even then... I still can't make it make sense!

I'm reading the judgment through now and there are definitely sections that are more rigorous than others, and sections that seem to weigh the issues up in as objective a manner as possible. And then there is the outright bonkers stuff caught by the press. And a lot of conclusions where I cannot see how they leapt from an apparently reasonable discussion of an issue to the next apparently batshit conclusion.

Fair point! Though I'm not sure that would matter if no-one is allowed to access opposite sex-spaces. Even the awful Peggie Judgment makes the excellent point that Gender Reassignment is a journey with an unreachable destination

I disagree vehemently - but that doesn't make you unpopular, disagreement is OK

Accessible toilets are a necessity not a choice for disabled people who need the adaptations. There is usually only one accessible toilet, so it's not like disabled people can just wait for the next cubicle to become vacant; and there is a possibility that they have access to the toilet very quickly.

I disagree that being trans can reasonably be regarded as a disability - there is nothing in trans-ness that means an able-bodied transperson cannot use a standard toilet, appropriate to their sex. They do not need adaptations or assistance to use a toilet.

You may be suggesting that they have some kind of mental disability - but believing you have changed sex isn't the kind of disability that requires the use of an accessible toilet.

Just as there are hidden disabilities that do require the use of an adapted toilet, there are other disabilities that do not prevent the disabled person from using the standard toilets. For example, I don't use a disabled toilet just because I'm deaf, but on days where my other conditions are particularly bad, I do use them because need the extra supports to be safe.

Other days, I use the standard women's toilet, leaving the accessible toilet free for disabled people who really need it.

It works on trust: disabled people trust able-bodied people, including trans, to stay out of accessible toilets so they are available to the people who really need them.

I get that we are being a bit tongue in cheek here, but I wouldn't want such a young person to be discriminated against in employment and housing purely based on the hair and nose rings

Blackbelt barrister talking about the case again. Mainly the Forstater correction.

Starts at around 3 minutes

Tiny, very tiny cough but I wish I believed he had been "disinterested", ie; not motivated by any personal interest regarding the case. A disinterested judge is what one should expect. An "uninterested" judge on the other hand, ought not to be in court at all.

Absolutely.
The pretence that men who put on a skirt are not a threat to women is both farcical and dangerous and really shows judges up as not giving two hoots about women's safety.

Never been in that position but various other situations I HAVE been in lead me to think my own reaction would be a blank stare. It's my go to reaction when I'm uncomfortable. And I rarely blink first. Perhaps I'm odd. But I really think whether wisely or unwisely, I'd stare him down. Possibly not the best idea in those circumstances but better, I feel, than turning my back on a potential threat.

I’ve made to the end before midnight. Am I right in thinking that DU reported the fact to his employer ( I think he regarded this as harassment to him ) that SP on occasions had the audacity to wait outside the changing room until he had left and possibly went somewhere else to change. He demanded a full apology from SP as part of the investigation. Surely this was tantamount to asking his employer to sanction her for avoiding him in the CR and therefore force her to change when he was there? Another point was him prior arranging for a female colleague to accompany him to said changing room as protection against SP. The colleague’s train was late so this didn’t happen. I could say more on a personal level about such a request in such circumstances but I won’t. I can’t recall if DU was really challenged on these points and the judge comments ? NC/CE I think concluded that SP would not be able to meet his demands to his satisfaction. Either way surely this is harassment or something similar? I thought it was a strange thing to be upset about, coercive in the extreme .His motives in my opinion, unlimited access to women’s spaces and only women’s spaces with no third option acceptable.