Sandie Peggie: Employment Tribunal, associated legal claims, and related matters - thread #67

[nauticant]

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.

A second Employment Tribunal, Sandie Peggie vs Royal College of Nursing, has just been heard. The hearing started on Wednesday 23 September 2026 and ended on Thursday 1 October 2026. It is possible that a decision will be handed down before Christmas of this year.

Additional legal claims have been raised. Sandie Peggie is taking action against three senior managers who were witnesses in the first 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 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

Thread 64: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5583133-sandie-peggie-employment-tribunal-associated-legal-claims-and-related-matters-thread-64 27 September 2026 to 29 September 2026

Thread 65: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5583663-sandie-peggie-employment-tribunal-associated-legal-claims-and-related-matters-thread-65 29 September 2026 to 30 September 2026

Thread 66: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5584074-sandie-peggie-employment-tribunal-associated-legal-claims-and-related-matters-thread-66 30 September 2026 to 1 October 2026

There were other private changing roms I believe

@Keeptoiletssafe no word on how to 'police' it either. I love the idea that men who continue to use women's spaces when the law has been clarified to say they mustn't are suddenly going to start respecting boundaries and go 'ah I'll use the men or GN space at work but use the ladies at the pub' or 'oh for passing TWs only? Well I'm 6'2" with size 11 feet, a receding hair line and a jaw like desperate Dan, I guess it's the gents for me despite the swishy skirt and the lippy'.

So why didn't the Dr use one?

the judgment records that Ms Davidson proposed that Peggie could use the store room, the well-being room, or the changing room in the main building. Other people chose to use these. The wellbeing room and store room both had a lockable door.

I think that such a facility/service (ie for women and transwomen ) might well be permissable under the equality act, subject to all of the conditions of a particular setting being of a sort that generated no detriment to either sex on the basis of sex or another PC.

I'd question whether it would be acceptable or legal to label the facility as 'women' though. Partly because it would simply be misleading. Arguably, the misleading would count as a detriment under the equality act (women are more likely than men to be put at risk by a misleading facility label, so there may be sex discrimination at play; and people of some faiths - eg Islam and some denomination/variations of Christianity - may also be disproportionately affected, creating belief discrimination.

Additionally, there are other laws at play. I wouldn't want to be a provider of a misleadingly labelled facility in which someone was sexually assaulted and they decided to sue me for labelling the facility in a manner that mislead users into feeling safer than they were. That would probably amount to negligence.

Also, in practice, what providers would be able/willing to meet the necessary conditions for providing the hybrid woman/transwoman facilities in a manner that ensured no actionable detriment to any protected characteristic. I'm imagining that in the case of changing rooms (and any other facility for which sex-seprated provision is deemed legitimate to avoid sex-based discrimination) it would involve four provisions : men's, women's, men/transmen, women/transwomen. Which is one more than the alternative of having men's, women's and unisex.

And lots of transwomen probably wouldn't like it because it still involves distinguishing between women and transwomen. So it doesn't really seem like a live possibility, as opposed to a casuistic move in a vexed online exchange

I don't think it would be misleading at all and the High Court doesn't suggest this either. It specifically contemplates a facility labelled "women" as lawfully including women and trans women only (depending on circumstances) .

You even like them enough to give them their proper accented 'e' (like a little orthographic cherry on a little cake). I did not deem them worthy of working out how to do that on my rubbishy chromebook.

On the night in question she was having a menstrual flood. She needed the changing room as that had the toilet in it.

A store room, FFS? Upton could've used any of those rooms too, couldn't he, instead of encroaching on the women's changing room, if he didn't want to use the men's?

Depending on hypothetical circumstances.

Realistic examples of which I don't think you have so far managed provide.

You can't keep hanging your argument on hypothetical musings. It doesn't wash, and frankly looks like you are clutching at invisible straws.

Yes it has to be the women that budge over.

But not warm weetabix, surely we are all agreed on that 😐

You don't think it would be misleading to have the title "woman" on a facility if in most situations that would mean "biological women only", but in some situations, where a range of special conditions were met (e.g. other toilets on another corridor about which the user knows nothing), it means "women and transwomen"?!

And as for the SC judgement, it concerned general principles and reflections on how those might, theoretically, be engaged by some possible real-world situations. You could think of those as being like thought experiments in philosophy. They are developed in order to tease out conceptual distinctions for the purpose of robust statements of principle. They don't carry any implications about real world practicalities.

All ‘inclusivity’ end points lead to individual vaults facilities.

Even @Lacksie agrees.

This has real life consequences, which I can evidence through my research over several years.

The reason this graphic says child is because I started my research with school toilet design. The DfE said school toilets weren’t covered under 1992 legislation so they have been the canaries in the coal mine for mixed sex designs.

You are utterly desperate to prevent non consenting women being permitted to have single sex spaces that you can't use. While using those women.

You are just repeatedly demonstrating what the law is for and why women desperately need it. Your entitlement and your male privilege, front and centre.

You can wangle endlessly and derail everything trying to make the law say what you want it to say. Mate, Stonewall law was tried. It didn't work for women. The law was clarified by women it didn't work for. It's now clear.

Women's single sex spaces are not for you. Sorry. But other people on this planet have needs too. And sadly women need legal protections from men absolutely blinded by their own entitlement, who would never permit those women's access or equality if they had any chance to override it.

I still miss the laugh emoji.

Indeed. There’s not much point, it’s been refuted by posters with much better understanding of the EA than Lacksie who appears to be getting her talking points straight from the GLP. Who lost their case, attempting to make much the same argument that the EHRC interim guidance was wrong.

So do I

"Birth sex females", as you so sympathetically put it, are 51% of the whole population. We are NOT there to be shunted off like pariahs to save hurting the feelings of a tiny minority of entitled men. "Trans women" are men - adult male humans - and do not get to rule the world. Transactivism really is the patriarchy on steroids, isn't it? Despite the long hair, head tilts and spinny skirts. 🙄

Inconveniently down in the basement and along a corridor where no sane sane nurse on night shift would think of going. You really haven't read the earlier Peggie tribunal threads, have you?

Back in the 50s I was brought up on warm Weetabix before school in winter.

There were other private changing roms I believe

There were not but if you persist in this claim you will need to provide a link to the evidence that there were individual private changing rooms for anyone.

Section 71 and its predecessors have historically been used mainly to prosecute gay men hooking up in public lavatories. A man being in a woman's toilet is unlikely to be an offence under this heading unless he is also guilty of some other offence such as exposure or voyeurism. If he were to masturbate without exposing himself, that would be an offence under this section but, if he is in the ladies, that is likely to also be voyeurism. So I think the only way a man in the ladies gets prosecuted for this offence alone would be if he engaged in consensual sexual activity. Passionate kissing may qualify, heavy petting should qualify.

However, a man in the women's is more likely to be prosecuted for voyeurism and/or exhibitionism.

You don't need a lockable door if the men stay out.

There was another changing room in the basement. Of course, since NHS Fife had given Upton permission to use the female changing rooms, that was also a unisex changing room just like the main female changing room that Sandie and the other female staff had used for decades. The only other alternative suggested by NHS Fife in their evidence was that Sandie could have changed in the toilets. That does not meet the requirement of the Workplace Regulations.

NHS Fife could have provided a separate gender neutral changing room for Upton and anyone else who wanted to use it, but that would not have satisfied Upton. Redesignating the women's changing room as unisex and providing a separate female changing room would also not have satisfied Upton and may have been problematic legally. But they did not take either of these options. They gave Upton permission to use the female changing rooms.

To repeat what I said yesterday, NHS Fife broke criminal law when they gave Upton permission to use the female changing rooms as it meant they no longer had any female changing rooms, just male changing rooms and unisex changing rooms. Indeed, if their stance was that any trans identifying individual could use the facilities that matched their preferred gender, they didn't have any male changing rooms either.

Saying an individual can use the store room or the well-being room to get changed does not meet the requirements of the Workplace Regulations. And, as per my last post, since Upton was allowed to use the female changing rooms, all the female changing rooms were now unisex.