Sandie Peggie: Employment Tribunal, associated legal claims, and related matters - thread #63

[nauticant]

TLDR version: Sandie Peggie vs Royal College of Nursing is currently being heard. The hearing started on Wednesday 23 September 2026 and is scheduled to end on Thursday 1 October 2026.

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 were of sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation. Dr Upton claimed 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 after a prolonged process judgment was handed down on 8 December 2025. That judgment is being appealed and an appeal hearing is expected to take place in 2027.

Additional legal claims have been raised. Sandie Peggie is taking action against the Royal College of Nursing, against three senior managers who were witnesses in the employment tribunal - Dr Kate Searle, Dr Maggie Currer and Esther Davidson, against Carol Potter, the chief executive of NHS Fife, for victimisation, against NHS Fife for discrimination, and against its director of people and culture David Miller for harassment. In addition, Sandie Peggie is being investigated by the Nursing and Midwifery Council over fitness to practice.

The past proceedings were live tweeted by www.x.com/tribunaltweets. Tribunal Tweets are likely to be providing coverage in current and future proceedings. There's additional information on Tribunal Tweets' substack: tribunaltweets.substack.com/.

Links to previous threads #1 to #60 can be found in this thread: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

Thread 60: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5461133-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-following-employment-tribunal-judgment-thread-60 16 December 2025 to 8 January 2026

Thread 61: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5472628-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-following-employment-tribunal-judgment-thread-61 8 January 2026 to 3 August 2026

Thread 62: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5562302-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-following-employment-tribunal-judgment-thread-62 3 August 2026 to 24 September 2026

👍🏻

Thank you for the thread

Are pp in? I am just getting WFTCHTJ

Great to see that SP has so many witnesses on her side this time around.

Thank you for the thread and to all contributors

Just catching up again. Thanks for the threads (this must be a record by now - has anything else hit 63 threads like this?). 🙏

The Archers is up to 203!

<faints at the prospect>

From TT

[Next witness is Pauline Fox]

The judge is affirming in the next witness Pauline Fox

NC: tribunal has already heard that you and JW are raising your own claims arising out of the online session. How did you come to hear of JW?
PF: I read of her intervening in the SC case but never met her.
NC: And how did you meet her?

Thank you nauticant for the continued threads and to all the valiant cut-and-pasters.

Of course I'm not surprised about the institutional capture of the RCN but it’s still pretty brutal to hear it laid out like this.

PF: I was quite upset by the session, I contacted Sex Matters for a debrief really. I'm a retiree, you don't have the same support as when working so contacted SM. They put me in touch with a nurse and that was JW.
NC: You went to different event than JW, can you tell me who was there?
PF: I don't know the attendees, there were 5-7 RCN leaders including a legal person who gave presentation at the beginning. Can't remember it all.
PF: The legal presentation was very factual and I don't think she contributed later in the meeting. There was a technical person - I can't remember names, there was so much going on in the chat that I couldn't really concentrate on the presentations.

Is anyone elses's sound dreadful?

NC: How were the chat and so on operated?
PF: My understanding was, some tech probs the day before and so there might be probs with mics etc and ppl should log out and log in again if so. I had tech problems - cd see and hear event but cd not turn on mic bcs turned off by organisers it said on my screen.
PF: So I was putting up my hand to speak but that didn't get picked up, I tried logging out and in 2 or 3 times but no good, so I thought I had better used the chat instead.
NC: You've mentioned there was a technical legal presentation, Joanne Galbraith Martin. What happened after the end of her presentation?
PF: The session seemed a bit unstructured - not clear what would happen next. There was a presentation by a trans-id male nurse, about impact on them emotionally

Mine's ok. Not brilliant (a bit fishbowlly), but not awful.

Thanks to the posters and @nauticant for the new thread.
It's devastating to hear how these two women were invited to a supposedly safe space and then subjected to such vitriol. How the RCN couldn't have forseen it all and properly safeguarded members i really don't know. I guess that's the power of capture.

PF: I think they were retired rather than still practicising. Some discussion from the RCN leads on consultations that had been happening about the impact of the SC ruling. Mentioned a number of trans-supportive organisations but can't recall names.
PF: I thought there would have been other orgs mentioned as stakeholders in the consultations they were talking about, was curious to find out what about other ppl affected eg women's organisations.
PF: This was in the side chat I was asking this, was told by I think the EDI programme director to email about this instead. I didn't understand why I was being taken aside for this. I asked again, are you saying you haven't consulted women's orgs? And she just reiterated, to email instead.

I guess they never bothered to ask an actual female nurse how they felt about having to share their CR's and toilets.

I am wondering if the judge might have to set aside this evidence as their case. Is sub judicial and the judge in believing them might interfere in the case yet to be heard. Hope MF can explore this at the end of today.

This present witness sounds like Balance Incarnate.

PF: So I let it drop. And meanwhile there was discussion going on about how important 'gender' was, and how ruling so upsetting for trans ppl, and RCN must support trans ppl. A speaker in uniform - did not catch name - was quite upset.
PF: So I was quite confused bcs I had thought the session for ppl to contribute to policy development in the area, and I wanted to contribute my experience of this back to the profession, how to meet everyone's needs inc trans ppl.
PF: But there didn't seem to be any space for that. My experience is, important in policy development to start with the law and accruate language, so, I made a statement about 'gender' as a concept and 'gender reassignment' in law - must be careful to distinguish.

I can imagine exactly how it’s come about: the people who happily went along with TWAW were so convinced it’s what nice people believe, they couldn’t imagine that any of the nice people around them could possibly take a more nuanced (not to mention legal) view. So why plan for a safe space and respectful discussion to extend both ways?

PF: And someone, I think a Patricia, quoted my statement and said this was a matter for reflection and she read it out. And there were loads of gasps. I was a bit shocked by the reaction - I'd only made a factual statement about law informing policy.
PF: And there was stuff in the chat about how what I had said was discriminatory and stuff. So I was wondering, when is RCN going to be clear that trans ppl do have protections - instead they were just letting trans ppl get really upset, not stepping in.
PF: I was v disappointed at calibre of leadership. Instead if was just about letting ppl ventilate their upset about something unnecessarily.

NC: You mention contributions from a trans-id man called Liz. Did any RCN officials respond to those?
PF: They were very empathetic - I think used words "horrific" about what was happening. I felt as if I was in the wrong movie or on another planet.
PF: I've used the RCN extensively in my policy development career and had great respect, but I now left completely alienated, as if this was theatre instead of any attempt at policy discussion.
NC: Do you remember anything specific from the chat?
PF: Lots of "affirmation" about supporting trans id nurses. I remember there was another woman who had not been able to get in and I don't know if she tried the chat - but I think they had to approve it, almost all mine had been.
NC: What else did you try to say in the chat that was not approved?
PF: I think something about employers having duty to all staff, and need a balanced way forward. That was toward the end.

PF: My Qs about engaging with women's groups were not approved for the main chat. My Qs asking about the tech difficulties - I didn't even get a private message on that one tho I did re the women's groups as I've said. I felt quite isolated and corralled by the way event managed.
PF: Then there was a message on the screen, Patricia again I think, saying put emails in the chat if you want to be kept in the loop, and I said I wasn't confident about doing that, it wasn't clear what was visible to whom, and I just didn't feel that safe to put my email address in.
PF: And the session closed at that point.
NC: Can you describe closure?
PF: It was very sudden - I checked my watch and it was much earlier than advertised. They said chat would be kept open and I was going to participate - but then the whole session ended for me.

These poor women