"Darlington Nurses" vs County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust Tribunal Thread 9

[ThreeWordHarpy]

Thread 1, 7-Oct to 23-Oct
Thread 2, 23-Oct to 28-Oct
Thread 3, 28-Oct to 29-Oct
Thread 4, 29-Oct to 31-Oct
Thread 5, 31-Oct to 04-Nov
Thread 6, 04-Nov to 05-Nov
Thread 7, 05-Nov to 11-Nov
Thread 8, 11-Nov to 16-Jan (last thread with the schedule and abbreviations)

Five nurses working at Darlington Memorial Hospital filed a legal case against their employer, an NHS trust, for sexual harassment and sex discrimination. The nurses objected to sharing the women’s changing facilities with a male colleague, Rose, who identifies as female. The hearing was held between 20th October and 11th November and was live tweeted by Tribunal Tweets who have comprehensive information regarding this case on their substack, including archives of the twitter threads, lists of people involved and press releases.

At the time this thread was started, the judgment had not yet been published on the Courts website but was widely reported in the media that the NHS was found to have discriminated against the nurses, but the claims against Rose were not upheld.

Wanker.

And so Labour give people (well, women, mostly) more reason not to trust them. I have no great hope or faith in Burnham over Starmer, but at least maybe he's a bit better at reading the room?

Not that I'm at all convinced that Labour could win the next GE anyway.

https://x.com/i/status/2069736250701992281

Brilliant news for the nurses and the trust will have to pay costs of the case on top. I assume this will reverberate around the NHS trusts and make them take notice.....or maybe not as they seem to have great difficulty coming to terms with the law.

It's a pretty full & frank aploogy with substantial costs awarded but there are still some unresolved matters...

The Trust has, however, refused to rule out taking disciplinary action against the nurses for speaking about their case, despite the Tribunal ruling going to the media was ‘a protected act.’

“We call upon the Trust to immediately ensure that all NMC disciplinary action against the Darlington nurses for bringing their case is immediately withdrawn.”

christianconcern.com/ccpressreleases/darlington-nurses-legal-victory-trust-pays-out-187000-in-damages-apologises-and-commits-to-separate-changing-facilities-between-male-and-female-staff/

Nitter version: https://nitter.poast.org/CConcern/status/2069736250701992281#r

If Darlington NHS has £603k legal costs and has to pay Darlington nurses £187k (their legal costs subject to a further hearing), I can’t see there being any change from £1M.

I hope there are some tough conversations going on in “NHS Legal”.

3 years this has been going on!

And their union hung them out to dry. Shame on all of them who don't do their core job of supporting their members.

Threadreaderapp version

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/2069736250701992281.html

Excellent news for the nurses and well deserved.

I did like the dig in the threadreader about the NHS spending £603,000 and counting on legal fees to defend allowing men to have access to women in their changing rooms. That is the crux of the matter - MEN accessing unconsenting women in a state of undress, it beggars belief. Only the worst kind of person would insist on that happening, there is something very wrong with the peole who advocate for, demand and attempt to impose this.

The NHS trust not ruling out disciplinary action is outrageous!! How much more of our money is to be spent on their witch hunt against GC women?!

NHS Legal’s budget is in excess of £3bn per year. This isn’t a rounding error on a rounding error error.

NHS Legal’s budget is in excess of £3bn per year.

I believe that includes all the compensation paid out for clinical negligence cases.

If £1m is such a piddling amount I hope this guy sues for being prosecuted and jailed for stealing only a little over a 10th of that

https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/former-nhs-manager-jailed-ps123000-fraud

His barrister could have pointed out how other NHS managers have been allowed to blithely piss away much, much more than he took.

The Trust's victim statement said

the money could have been used to improve patient care, for example providing additional roles within GP practices to supply more healthcare appointments for patients. The statement outlined that the funds could have paid for:
• Four Nursing Associates for a year or,
• Two Community Paramedics for a year or,
• Two Clinical Pharmacists for a year.
• One tenth of a court case trying to ensure a man could get his kit off where women (nurses no less) were also attempting to get changed.

Damages for malpractice £3.3bn, damages for harassment, £0.00018bn

Darlington nurses awarded £187k in trans changing room row

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/b29e8fc3dd17b429

I can almost feel the fury burning through the words "sincere apologies" from the Trust's letter. They would have been apoplectic at having been found so dismally contrary to the law first of all, and now they have to APOLOGISE as well?

Good. Now go "learn your lessons".

This is great news. It will be very hard for employers to ignore this result, surely?

Can I just ask, are the new unisex facilities being provided in addition to the single sex facilities, or replacing them?

Employers are required to provide single-sex toilets and changing rooms (where required). So the NHS already has those, they just need to ensure that they are genuinely and ONLY for one sex. They should be looking into providing additional mixed-sex toilets and changing areas, if they have the space and need for them.

Whether all that will happen, well, it's the NHS.

ps. There are also requirements for universal, accessible toilets for disabled people and their carers if necessary, but I'm not sure about the specifics on those. I think @keeptoiletssafe would know.

I think under the Health and Safety Workplace Regs that single sex facilities must be provided for men and women but any employer can choose to provide a unisex space but in addition not instead of.

Ms Hutchison added: “We were completely vindicated by the tribunal, including for speaking openly to the media about what was happening to us. Yet despite that clear ruling, the NMC investigations still hang over our heads like a shadow.
“It is deeply distressing to remain under regulatory threat after being found to have acted lawfully and courageously. Nurses should never be punished for telling the truth about discrimination and safeguarding concerns.”

Need to hear from the NMC now. Will they stop their witch-hunt?

So now every trust in the country that signed up to the Rainbow Badge scheme and had trans policies which mandated that employees should use the changing room appropriate for their gender, starting as soon as they started the transition process, will now have to tear up those policies and provide single sex facilities. This is going to be fun.

For most Trusts, I would assume the logistics would be very simple. Literally just rip up the policies (change a few words in a Word doc and republish it) and ensure that their toilets and changing rooms, if they say "Women", mean biological women only. Same for "Men." Then tell all your employees about it and tell them that not following Trust policy will be a disciplinary issue. This is how it was before the Gender Wagon appeared.

Changing NHS culture will probably be the hard part, but I suspect most women will be glad. Probably all of them, even if they won't admit it.

Some men will be #Sad.

ed. SPAG

And due to these wonderful women, they've nowhere to hide. Case by case the clear meaning of the law is reinforced and the NHS will be forced to comply.

We owe all these courageous women so much.