BBC admits toilets and services are based on biological se - and some other responses to new guidelines

[IwantToRetire]

Single-sex spaces - such as changing rooms, toilets and hospital wards - must be used on the basis of biological sex, new guidance from the equalities watchdog has confirmed.

This means, for instance, that a trans woman - a biological male who identifies as a woman - should not use female toilets or changing rooms, according to the code of practice.

The guidance, produced by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and now approved by ministers, makes it clear that transgender people should be offered a third or a gender-neutral space.

However, the code states that leaving a trans person without access to any services or facilities would be unlikely to be proportionate.

Article continues at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0e2rj3zj02o

(I wonder how all of those the recent article exposed for perpetuating the Stonewal guidance as being THE guidance will do now.)

Only the Good Law Project could spin it like this!

It makes clear that offering only biological single-sex services is likely to indirectly discriminate against trans people, and alternatives must be provided. But the guidance also harmfully treats trans people like a third sex, suggesting that they should use third spaces, rather than saying that services be provided on a trans-inclusive basis.

https://goodlawproject.org/the-code-of-practice-what-you-need-to-know/

Or think trans inclusion is more important that sex based rights!

And Stonewall also saying trans inclusion is the priority:

Today the Equality and Human Rights Commission's long-awaited Code of Practice on Services, Public Functions, and Associations was published by the Government.

The updated Code is 340 pages long. We along with duty bearers need time to read and digest it, and fully understand how services, public functions and associations can be inclusive in line with the law.

More https://www.stonewall.org.uk/news/stonewall-responds-to-the-long-awaited-ehrc-code-of-practice

From the Good Law Project's page:

The guidance already had to be changed because Good Law Project’s legal challenge showed the EHRC’s initial draft had gotten the law wrong.

Erm. 😂😂😂

Even the Guardian didn't put that kind of lie spin out there:

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/13/good-law-project-loses-challenge-interim-ehrc-advice-single-sex-spaces

The contrast behind this clarity and the questions that are arising on the EHRC thread re the wording in the guidance is interesting.

However, it's a huge positive that the BBC has gone for such a simple take on it. Hopefully this will be the prevailing understanding: it is against the law to use spaces for the opposite sex (where single-sex spaces exist). More of this please BBC.

Good point.

And in some way maybe FWRers shouldn't contribute to a public infinite disection and just got right, its clear now.

How to make sure groups and politicians just get on with it.

Just dont engage with whatifs - that the usual suspects will say it still isn't clear.

Not forgetting that the single sex exemptions still exist, and if only women's groups would work together, it would be easy to create a framework that said it is always "proportionate" for services that support women who haved been raped, or women who are escaping domestic abuse, should have single sex services.

Sadly it will be the groups who got Stonewalled who will no doubt go on about it isn't clear cut.

Such a shame that they dont take the initiative.

Whilst today brings good news, questions remain as to how, for so many years, a fundamentally incorrect interpretation of the law was included in the EHRC Code published in 2011, and how it was embraced by all the institutions of state and public life, such as the police, courts, NHS, education services, military forces, trade unions, industry and Civil Service.

Labour Women’s Declaration will continue to hold our Labour government to account on sex-based rights and to campaign against any attempt to row back on the progress that has been made by the clarity of the Supreme Court ruling.

Today will be of particular resonance for lesbian women for whom the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex attraction was deeply significant. Misinterpretation of the law led to the erasure of lesbian spaces, attacks on freedom of association and accusations of bigotry towards lesbian women for refusing to describe trans-identified men as lesbians. The betrayal of the lesbian community by what came to be known as ‘Stonewall law’ has been shameful.

We now expect the government and EHRC to get tough with any service providers who claim the law does not apply to them. Let us see an end to individual women having to pursue costly litigation and a return to a Labour and trade union movement that demonstrates in deeds not words that they are on the side of women everywhere.

Extract only - in full at https://labourwomensdeclaration.org.uk/lwd-statement-on-updated-ehrc-code-of-practice-for-services-public-functions-and-associations/

It’s hilarious as he admits there are only two sexes 😂

Just addding this previous articles by this group have been thought well thought out.

Women’s Rights: EHRC Code Laid Before Parliament, and Reality Finally Enters the Room

This publication should not require celebration. It should have been obvious from the moment of the Supreme Court judgment more than a year ago. But in a country where obvious things are routinely made obscure when they inconvenience the right people, it is worth stating plainly: “The law has been confirmed, the Code has been laid, and the age of institutional excuse has ended.”

Every organisation that spent the last year hiding behind “confusion” now has nothing left to hide behind. That is not a culture war. That is the law.

...

A women-only service that admits males is not a women-only service. The Code does not say this diplomatically. It says it legally.

...

The women most affected by the erosion of single-sex spaces are not the women with platforms, not the women who can afford private healthcare, not the women who work in organisations progressive enough to offer multiple facility options and enough staff to enforce them. They are the women who use public changing rooms because they cannot afford a gym with private cubicles. They are the women who depend on NHS wards because they have no private health insurance. They are the women in prisons. They are the women in refuges. They are the women at the bottom of the income distribution, who cannot opt out of shared spaces because they have no alternative.

For those women, the principle is not abstract. The changing room, the hospital ward, the refuge room: these are not theoretical rights. They are the material conditions of ordinary life. And when institutions strip those spaces of their single-sex character in the name of inclusion, the cost is not distributed equally. It falls on the women who can least afford to bear it.

...

This publication has made no secret of its view that the Labour Party under Keir Starmer failed women on this question. The failure was not accidental. It was ideological, in the precise sense that word deserves: a preference for the comfort of certain political networks over the material interests of the working-class women Labour claims to represent.

This is what ideological capture looks like in practice. Not jackboots. Not a single dramatic betrayal. A series of reasonable-sounding delays, all pointing in the same direction, all serving the same interest, and none of them serving working-class women.

...

The BBC’s own broadcast coverage of the Code’s publication stated this plainly: providers should ensure trans people are not left without services, while single-sex services must operate on the basis of biological sex.

That is the balance. It is not complicated. It requires only that institutions stop pretending the law says something it does not say, and start applying the law as it actually stands.

...

Parliament now faces a simple choice: let the law stand, or explain to the women of this country why it should not.

https://labourheartlands.com/womens-rights-ehrc-code

I welcome and support the Labour Women's Declaration.

As for third spaces, these given the level of privacy that they should have I think are not just for those who have transgendered.

LGBTIQA+ Greens are disgusted

... We must act. LGBTIQA+ Greens members, Green Party members more widely, and especially our leaders and elected representatives at all levels, must work together to oppose this segregationist charter. Call it out. Tell your friends. Write to your MPs and councillors. There will be protests – join them, we are going to.

To all of our friends and allies in the Green Party: work with us to make sure our policy stays relevant and responds to the attacks on us. We know the Equality Act needs a full update to restore and extend the rights of trans, non-binary and intersex people – so let’s get that policy written and passed. And let’s redouble our efforts to make sure our party is the most inclusive and supportive political party in England & Wales.

Going forward, whenever and wherever the Green Party achieves power it will legislate to undo the damage done by the EHRC and rebuild the trust of trans, non-binary, and intersex people in government. The EHRC Code of Practice, the Supreme Court ruling it stems from, and the Labour Party that paved the way for them, desecrated the equality legislation they purported to uphold. The Green Party will restore it.

https://lgbtiqa.greenparty.org.uk/2026/05/22/statement-on-the-latest-ehrc-code-of-practice/

The Charity Commission has promised to work “at pace” to update relevant aspects of its guidance in the light of guidance from the equalities watchdog.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission yesterday published its long-awaited draft code of practice for services, public functions and associations.

The document sets out how public bodies, business and other service providers should respond to last year’s Supreme Court ruling that sex in the Equality Act refers only to biological sex.

The guidance, which will be laid before parliament for 40 days before coming into effect, says single-sex spaces must be used on the basis of biological sex. This means, for example, that a trans woman should not use female-only toilets or changing rooms.

The move has been welcomed by gender-critical campaigners but criticised by others for the negative impact it could have on people.

The Charity Commission has been awaiting the guidance and in January David Holdsworth, chief executive of the regulator, urged ministers to speed up the publication of the EHRC guidance to give clarity for charities in this area.

His intervention came after Girlguiding UK and the National Federation of Women’s Institutes both said they would exclude trans women from their services following the Supreme Court ruling.

article continues at https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/regulator-pledges-work-at-pace-update-guidance-wake-new-ehrc-code/governance/article/1959175