Sandie Peggie: Employment Tribunal, associated legal claims, and related matters - thread #64

[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: www.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 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

Thread 63: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5581909-sandie-peggie-employment-tribunal-associated-legal-claims-and-related-matters-thread-63 24 September 2026 to 27 September 2026

Meh. I don’t think the pronoun thing is going anywhere. SF is entitled to his own view about what pronouns to use for DU, as are we each. I can treat DU fairly and without discrimination despite referring to him as a man. SF could and should have dealt better with SP regardless of what pronouns he used for DU.

The thing with rights, is that they apply even to people you don't like.

In the original hearing NHS Fife's barrister, Jane Russell, spent some time trying to portray Sandie as racist, homophobic, etc. She did eventually come up with some evidence when another nurse revealed that Sandie had once copied a series of jokes to a shared WhatsApp group, many of which were racist. Sandie admitted that the jokes were offensive, said she regrets sharing them and said she wouldn't do it again. She was also accused of making a racist remark to a colleague, but the colleague in question appears to have denied this. NHS Fife appeared to be attempting to argue that Sandie did not deserve Equality Act protection, but that is not how the law works. Her GC views are protected regardless of whether we approve of her views on other subjects.

Yep. I need to use the disabled loo.

Do I lose that right just because I'm an absolute arsehole at times?

It's definitely alchemy.
And you know you're in for a hard few days when the Slippers of Despair are brought out to complement the Dressing Gown of Doom.
I have had a horrible fluey bug but managed to remain upright and busy. Mr Normality on the other hand was so dreadfully poorly. Touch and go whether he survived.

You mean like Cis is a label imposed externally on women.

I have to say, for a woman beetle I do an amazing dressing gown of doom, slippers of despair shuffle with bonus points for the pained expression on my face.

Well it's also banned on mumsnet to call another user "cis"!

Look...

Not so much banned as frowned upon heavily.

"IIRC it came out in the trial that she forwarded a load of really racist jokes to a group of colleagues."

@Lacksie I'm sure you're not trying to deliberately mislead people, but you forgot to mention that Sandie just forwarded one single screenshot of jokes from a colleague to some friends in her WhatsApp group, which she apologised for.

If people spent weeks trawling through your social media for the past decade, do you think they might just find something you wouldn't be proud of?

Sandie was also accused by Jane Russell of being homophobic. Then it came out that her daughter was gay and that she and her partner were often round SP's house, so that suddenly stopped being mentioned.

IIRC the racist jokes were one message in years of Whatsapps in the group. Not what many people would find acceptable, but they were shared between a small group and came out only because someone SP considered a good friend produced them. It rather implies that SP thought the rest of the group, people she had known for a long time, would appreciate them.

Individuals deserve protection in law, even if they are not People Like Us or "Good" People, or have opinions that one doesn't agree with.

I cannot imagine the scale of message and WhatsApp deletions that occurred throughout NHS Fife after that came out!

This.

I think I simply replied with the same info as numerous other people on this thread. I wasn't trying to pass judgement one way or another. I think those jokes were deeply unpleasant, not the kind of thing I have ever shared , no, and I am glad she apologised. I believe her apology was probably sincere.
Do I think it has much relevance to the changing room issues? No. Do I have my own personal opinions about what sort of attitudes SP holds, and how that affects her behaviour?- sure, but that is broader than a WhatsApp with some racist jokes.

SP doesn't need to past a purity test to have her right to single sex changing rooms met.

This was a general comment after many years of being on FWR. Sorry you didn't appreciate the information. 🤔

Quite

Just leave Lacksie alone, for goodness sake. It's all the endless posts sniping about her that constitute the derailment, not her own posts, which have been polite and unexceptionable. The only time her own posts seemed a bit derail-ly was when she was quick-firing responses to a pile-on - so even then it was the pile-on that derailed

If she says something that interests you, reply to it in the normal way. If you see her as an 'intruder' then just leave her alone.

Someone upthread compared her to the lone supporter of the 'the other football team' in the stands at a match. That seems about right - and it doesn't justify all this hectoring and sniping.

What do you want to get out of sniping like this? You are only bringing the thread back to its most unconstructive portions

This is one thing I don't understand. If this happened in public it would be indecent exposure but in a female changing room it's OK?

I’m not sure that’s quite fair. The earlier tribunal treated the “women’s prison incident” as a reference to the Isla Bryson case, and that appears to have been an agreed fact in the pleadings.
What was disputed was whether referring to that situation amounted to comparing Upton personally to a rapist.

And this is where you are wrong Lacksie as you would know if you had been following the case from the beginning. Sandie Peggie mentioned trans identifying prisoners being put in female prisons. Naomi Cunningham managed to tease out the fact that Upton and his Consultant had decided that this was Isla Bryson and erroneously recorded that as what Sandie had said.

As this afternoon's witness has shown that he's happy to record what he wishes someone had said, instead of sticking to the actuall words.

@Lacksie, I appreciate that you are new to FWR but when you say "I think I simply replied with the same info as numerous other people on this thread," you are mistaken.

We go out of our way on this board to be as accurate as possible. Saying that Sandie forwarded 'a load of jokes' could leave people with the misleading impression this was something she did more than once. Obviously that was not the case.

I just mention it so you understand why people are trying to help you to be more nuanced.

Yes that’s how I remembered it @Peregrina

One of the witnesses today was attacked by a paedophile prisoner from a high security unit who was fortunately prevented by prison staff from physically harming her. He then called her deeply unpleasant racist names. This is, according to one prolific poster, apparently worse than actually telling a urology consultant he was a man when seeking information about appropriate treatment of his urology problem. She'd called him by the feminine name he wanted but that is never enough for these entitled men.

Sandie sent a what's app group used to the black humour of those working in health care some bad jokes. Not my sort of humour but nothing to do with her right to undress without a man watching her. It's a very bigoted position - of the type that led to racist behaviour - to think some people have no rights because you think they are inferior.

jokes.