EHRC Code of Practice on Services, Public Functions and Associations has been laid - here is the Code itself

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

Written Statement made by: Secretary of State for Education and Minister for
Women and Equalities (Bridget Phillipson) on 21 May 2026:

https://commonsbusiness.parliament.uk/Document/105423/Pdf?subType=Standard

I have approved the draft Code submitted on 4 September 2025 and as updated by the EHRC in April 2026 following engagement with government and their consideration of consultation responses and further legal analysis.
The current Code was produced in 2011 and there have been significant developments since then, including the Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland, resulting in the EHRC wanting to update the Code.
Following last year’s Supreme Court ruling, the draft Code’s content on sex and gender reassignment has changed substantially from the 2011 version. The ruling made it clear that sex means biological sex for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 and that trans people are still protected by the Act under the protected characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’.

The Code of Practice on Services, Public Functions and Associations itself:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/equality-act-2010-draft-code-of-practice-for-services-public-functions-and-associations-2026

What was it someone said about Andy Burnham not having any stance that he hadn't/wouldn't drop?

The Equalities Act 2010 does not place any obligations on people as private citizens and service users, so we still have the right to ask the carer and their employer under the The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, Section 10, 2 (c)

Dignity and respect

10.—(1) Service users must be treated with dignity and respect.

(2) Without limiting paragraph (1), the things which a registered person is required to do to comply with paragraph (1) include in particular—

(a) ensuring the privacy of the service user;

(b) supporting the autonomy, independence and involvement in the community of the service user;

(c) having due regard to any relevant protected characteristics (as defined in section 149(7) of the Equality Act 2010) of the service user.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/2936/regulation/10

However, there are currently problems when organisations do not record the sex of staff and/or service users, so maintain that because of this that they are unable to provide same-sex services. They are therefore in breach of the The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, Section 10, 2 (c).

The CQC is wooly on the issue - creating a sex/gender loophole in CQC Guidance. Obviously, this is misleading and if it went to court then then it is the Legislation, not the CQC Guidance, that would be relied on. (I wonder if the CQC has been challenged on this . . . I feel a visit to "What Do They Know" and an FOI search coming on).

CQC Guidance

Regulation 10: Dignity and respect

10(1) Service users must be treated with dignity and respect.
When providing intimate or personal care, provider must make every reasonable effort to make sure that they respect people's preferences about who delivers their care and treatment, such as requesting staff of a specified gender/sex

https://www.cqc.org.uk/guidance-regulation/providers/regulations-service-providers-and-managers/health-social-care-act/regulation-10

This is at odds with protecting service users from sexual abuse:

Regulation 13: Safeguarding service users from abuse and improper treatment
https://www.cqc.org.uk/guidance-regulation/providers/regulations-service-providers-and-managers/health-social-care-act/regulation-13

Example of what has been happening in practice:

"On 30th April 2024 the Caring about Dignity team went to parliament to present a report on their campaign for same-sex care to parliamentarians"

1) Speakers included Sam, one of our founders whose non verbal highly autistic daughter, Helen, has been denied same-sex care provision. Sam's council does not collect data on sex."

https://www.caringaboutdignity.org/our-news-and-reports/

Extracts from Sam's speech that you can download from that page:

For the last three and a half years, my husband and I have been asking our local authority to collect data on the protected characteristic of sex, not just gender. Additionally, we have been asking for a commitment from them to commission same sex services.
We believe:

• Firstly, that Helen, and all those like her, have necessary and intrinsic rights to safeguarding and dignity: her intimate care takes place behind closed doors on a 1:1 , lone working basis and she cannot bear witness
• Secondly, we believe that Helen does not have the mental capacity to choose or ‘feel’ her gender – the only thing we can fairly and truly ascertain is her biological sex
• And thirdly, we believe that Helen’s sex-based rights cannot be honoured unless the sex of all parties involved in her care is known and recorded.

Our local authority does not collect data on the sex of its disabled adults in adult social care.

Their justification for this includes (and these are direct quotes from correspondence):

• 'forcing individuals to disclose their sex assigned at birth would potentially be a violation of their human rights’
• ‘we have no intention to facilitate or support the commissioning of single sex services in the current market’

The Caring About Dignity Report from their House of Lords Event on 28 April 2024 has lots more information and references:
https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/6e/3c6ee750-2b6c-443e-8a48-6d1261eabfa8/content/files/2024/05/Caring-about-Dignity-HoL-event-April-2024-FINAL.pdf

Slight tangent as this next bit is about same-sex accommodation.

When I was checking NHS updates on single-sex and same-sex provision for this post I came across this.

I wonder if the revised guidance on NHS same-sex accommodation was put on hold pending issue of the EHRC Code of Practice? Not that a delay for that reason would be justified.

Delivering same-sex accommodation
Document first published: 14 September 2019
Page updated: 24 April 2025

Following the ruling from the Supreme Court in the For Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v The Scottish Ministers (Respondent) case published 16 April 2025, our Delivering same-sex accommodation guidance, published in 2019, is currently being reviewed.

All providers of NHS-funded care continue to be expected to provide high quality care that meets all patients’ clinical needs, safeguards them from the risk of harm and ensures their privacy and dignity when they are admitted to hospital.

Providers should continue to measure and report breaches of the NHS Constitution pledge on same sex accommodation.

Revised guidance which supports privacy, dignity and safety for all patients in hospital accommodation will be published as soon as possible.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/delivering-same-sex-accommodation/
and
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/delivering-same-sex-accommodation/

That was published under the Topic "Gender Identity" and there have been no other relevant updates in the "Gender Identity" Topic since April 2025.

Helen Joyce on Jeremy Vinę today 5m clip https://x.com/JournalismSEEN/status/2057792323715547459

I'm glad that we've finally got back to where we were before all this nonsense started. No, it's not perfect, in most situations there will be no one there to enforce it, but that's what we always had.

Good men stay out so that bad men stand out. That's how it always was and that's where we are coming back to now.

We've come a long way from not even being able to state the bloody obvious.

I was thinking about the whole issue of how do you prove someone's sex in relation to use of single sex services.

If a service provider believes that the person wishing to use female facilities is a man they could bar them from using them. If that person wishes to sue for sex discrimination on the basis that they are female then they would have to prove to the court that they were female, the service provider would not need to prove they are a man. The burden of proof lies with the claimant in a civil legal case.

It just takes service providers to be brave when confronted by an obvious man wishing to use female single sex facilities.

Not quite. There’s likely to be more unisex toilets that never featured much in non-domestic provision until disabled toilets came along.

Yes, possibly more unisex but they have to be in addition to separate male and female unless a very small establishment. There must be far fewer places now that don't have an accessible toilet.

They've been banging on about the tiny, tiny percentage of people who are trans for ages, so it does seem proportional.

Well, isn't he speshul?

There is no way of saying "no" to these men that is "fairest and most compassionate" because the ones who want to invade female spaces hear nothing but high-pitched, hysterical squeals when women say no.

Thank you so much for this. It's a lot to read, so will start looking into it this weekend, as I am particularly concerned about this aspect of care.

I do agree about the distance we have come. I just wish the Guidance was less muddled. I think complicating it and adding in additional, unnecessary examples was deliberate.

It just takes service providers to be brave

I agree, but am not holding my breath.

I just came through a large London train station which offers public loos.
Outside it was a group of 5 or 6 late teens early 20s plainly trans-identified men, all long hair and short skirts, and the obligatory small woman with half blue hair. All guffawing and high fiving.
I hadn't been there 5 mins earlier so cant swear to it, but I'd be tolerably confident they had all just used opposite sex loos. No attendant to challenge them, mind you, just the turnstiles, but they were exuding "we stuck it to The Man" vibes 😀
And I just thought, fuck, this is just not going to end.
V depressing.

I think it was WRN who did a report about sexual abuse when someone needs close personal care. It's mostly men doing it and it's mostly women affected and the numbers we know about are horrific. It was mentioned on the thread about Noelia Castillo. There have been all sorts of horrific cases including women who have been made pregnant via carer rape.

As far as single sex spaces in the NHS goes there's a lot of mixed sex spaces (in fact all of them I think, really, according to Knotty + team's audit) labelled single sex because of deliberate misuse and obfuscation using the words 'sex' and 'gender' as best suits what they want. So it's really disappointing that this seems to have happened a bit in the EHRC guidance too.

This is also another area where use of sex vs gender and wrong-sex pronouns is at odds with safety of patients. 'Oh yes, you have a new carer, 'she'll' be there to meet you at 10 tomorrow'. The expectation would be that a physical woman would turn up but in NHS speak it could just as easily be a man.

Yes, the audit showed up the NHS for what it really is, didn't it?

it won't, until it is criminalised (as it should be)

There was too much given, and now taking it back will be impossible without consequences.

@SingleSexSpacesInSchools Thanks for the SexMatters link; I've been waiting for it! Outstanding review of the new guidance and should go a long way to allay fears about loop-holes or back-tracking.

It definitely needs to be the case that men with their dick out in the ladies need to start getting prosecuted no matter whether or not they're wearing a dress. It's a sex crime and it's about time it was treated as such. Many of these men have put evidence of such crimes on X and other social media platforms.

I suspect a few high profile successful prosecutions might speed up the return to a normal social consensus on this.

If When this happens again, is it the group of stupid 22 year old Omnicausers that we take legal action against, or the service provider?

(Not an academic question, I really expect to have to do this at some point!)

Do you know, how do these young people cope when they meet real-life examples? Do you suppose they tell themselves that they should see a woman and it's their own failure if they don't? Or something different?

Both and see what sticks?

I suppose what I'm really wondering is where the liability sits. I thought I saw somewhere that the liability falls to the employer/service provider, but I can't remember where I saw that. We have so many legal minds here...

It would be difficult in the extreme to try to get a bunch of anonymous interlopers from a train station into court, especially if you can't prove something like voyeurism and you don't have the service provider's backing (why would they get involved if they are not liable? bad publicity, possibly, but unlikely given the backlash they would experience from TRAs)

So, if anyone legal can point me in the right direction?

Haven't RTFT, but is there any evidence that Bridget has incorporated something of her own into the document?

Also, any org (especially a branch of government, like a council!) that deliberately chooses to collect data on gender instead of sex, for me, they reveal themselves as bad actors. Nothing good can come of this. The statistical base on which all governments rely has already been damaged enough.

well that’s the thing. I don’t think they do cope. Society has not set them up with coping strategies and society is also painted everything as black-and-white. Absolutely polarised you with us or you are against us. You are a Nazi or…

Liability absolutely falls on the providers not on the perpetrators

I think the problem with that is proving intent if they’re wandering around with an erection that’s one thing but if they’re going in and using a toilet, it might be difficult to prove with the current laws that there was any malicious intent

That’s why I think it should be made a criminal offence for a male to enter a female space or a female to into a male space with the obvious details and caveats et cetera et cetera

These guys are not going to give up. The fight has only hardened them even if it has reduced the number of people. You just need to look at the Reddit comments and posts to see how far they will go and what they will do.