Civil service bans men from women’s spaces? Leaked guidance

[LadyHelenaThistle]

Can anyone in the civil service confirm this? From the leaked document:

Access to facilities
11. The Department is responsible for managing access to workplace facilities and ensuring that arrangements are lawful, appropriate, and meet the needs of all employees. An employee cannot independently make a decision about which facilities they will use, but must follow the Department's policy and guidance.

12. Employees are not required to disclose their gender identity. However, it will help the Department to fulfil its responsibilities to you as an employer if you do choose to share information about your circumstances. Neither are you required to disclose if you have a GRC. Although a GRC changes your legal status in certain respects, it does not alter your sex for the purposes of accessing single-sex facilities.

13. You may not elect to use facilities of your affirmed gender which are designated as single-sex. Where provision of facilities is limited, interim facilities access arrangements may need to be put in place. Your line manager will work with you and the departmental Estates team to consider the options available within your workplace while any longer-term facilities provision is arranged.

14. Depending on the facilities available in your workplace and as defined in the Policy's Glossary of terms, the facilities available to you are most likely to be:

• facilities which are designated as unisex or universal, including a unisex accessible toilet
• facilities of your sex which are designated as single-sex. If you are content to use these, this may be possible in some circumstances. However, your line manager will not require you to use or continue to use these.

15. If you work from locations other than your base office, you may find that the facilities provision is not the same. If you are not sure what facilities you should be using when visiting those premises, you should raise this with your line manager or contact the designated Estates mailbox.

16. All arrangements on access to facilities may need to be reviewed with your line manager from time to time so that the Department, as your employer, can ensure legal compliance e.g. when there is a change in legal interpretation or any relevant statutory guidance about use of facilities.

17. All employees are expected to follow this guidance and associated policy, regardless of whether they choose to disclose information about their gender identity.

29. Everybody can use their preferred name and pronouns at work if they wish.
30. Some people choose to include their pronouns as part of their email signature and on Teams. Doing so is not compulsory.

Excerpt from advice to managers when employee announces transition:

• advise them that accommodating their needs will need to be balanced with those of their colleagues and the business

• discuss access to suitable facilities, bearing in mind the nature and extent of the available facilities at the relevant workplace

Where is this from? Sorry I might have missed something.

53. Intentional or repeated deadnaming and/or misgendering can also happen for other reasons e.g. a neurodivergent condition or memory issue, which should be established before any action is taken. However, deliberate deadnaming or misgendering to deny, mock or invalidate a person's transgender identity is unacceptable and should be investigated as potential misconduct.

I’m reading it here but cutting bits out in case it disappears. It’s not an official site, but I’ve been hearing about this document for ages. The date on it is yesterday.

Yeah it’s right. Not sure about point 16 - don’t remember that wording.

Access to facilities
60. The Department, as employer, must comply with legal and health & safety requirements for all employees, including the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 which require the provision of sufficient separate sanitary conveniences for men and women or sufficient universal sanitary conveniences in separate lockable rooms.

61. Employees are not required to disclose if they have a GRC. Although a GRC changes legal status in certain respects, it does not alter sex for the purposes of accessing shared single-sex facilities. Access to facilities is a matter for the Department to manage in a way that balances the needs and safety of all employees. If you are unsure of the appropriate response, please seek further advice from HR Advice and Support. Access through this link: HR Casework

62. The configuration of facilities available will differ from site to site. If you are unsure what the options are at your site, please seek clarification from your Estates team. If the facilities are within an area that is not owned/managed by the Department or GPA, your Estates team will be able to engage the site owner.

63. Transgender employees should not use facilities for their affirmed gender which are designated as single-sex. The Department is seeking to increase the availability of unisex provision across its estate, but at some sites this may be limited. Where this is the case, interim facilities access arrangements (supported by site specific assessments) will need to be put in place so that there are adequate facilities for transgender employees.

64. Depending on the facilities available in the workplace, the facilities available to transgender employees are most likely to be:

• facilities which are designated as unisex or universal, including a unisex accessible toilet
• facilities of their sex which are designated as single-sex. If they are content to use these, this may be possible in some circumstances. However, you must not require them to use or continue to use these.

65. Your Estates team will be able to consider making changes to local facilities to address their limitations e.g. signage changes to provide clarity where appropriate, review of existing facilities to support universal provision. You can seek advice on this from HR Advice and Support and your departmental Estates team. [Access through this link: HR Casework]. They will assess the workplace impact and work with local facilities management to accommodate any reasonably possible changes.

66. You will also need to consider access to facilities for any transitioning employees joining from another department as facilities provision may differ. This should be covered as part of your regular ongoing discussions with the employee and also applies to workplaces other than the employee's base office.

67. Other employees may have concerns about, or object to, the facilities access arrangements put in place. You will need to explain that you are following the legally correct process set out by the Department, without breaching confidentiality. Any concerns or complaints around facilities and toilet access must be raised in an appropriate manner i.e. by speaking discreetly with you, or another manager, and not confronting or challenging the transgender colleague directly. Concerns can also be raised through the Speak up process. Any formal complaints must be raised using departmental policy.
    You can use the Speak Up Safely contact form to raise a concern as a first step.

• If something doesn't feel right, speak up
• Speak Up: Do Something
• Professional Behaviours Hub
• Grievance and Issue resolution

love this one. I refuse to have it in my email sig

Some people choose to include their pronouns as part of their email signature and on Teams. Doing so is not compulsory.

22. If you are transitioning, you should not feel obliged to share any details; you can simply inform colleagues that you are transitioning. You will need to be aware that some of your colleagues may not believe in transgender or gender identities and, if this is a philosophical belief, it is protected under the EA. All views should be expressed in an appropriate and respectful way.

And about time too. Civil Service obeys the law shock. Thank you LadyH

I THINK (but not certain) there is a new "model" policy for the CS overall, and then different depts can either copy that directly or create their own versions, but which must be in line with that. So not sure if what's been shared there is the overall model policy, or that of one specific dept and if so, which? But they should be fairly similar.

Gosh what an exciting outburst of sanity hot on the heels of the NHS documents too.

It also seems true that their special paid gender transition leave is no more, and their absences are to be counted as sick leave.

Just a very small note to add, my sister has a first name that is also a common man's first name so she puts (miss) after it in her email signature to avoid confusion. It's obvious she's a woman when you meet her - naturally - but in these times of remote working she can email colleagues for years and never meet them.

Very glad to see this guidance

Crikey, is sanity actually returning?

Without the means to enter women's spaces for whatever reason, I predict that there will be a reduction in how many men want to transition.

Well that all seems staggeringly clear and sensible. Wonders will never cease!

I had a colleague called Nicola whose responsibilities included liasing with customers in Italy, where Nicola is a male name. She didn't draw attention to her femaleness but noticed that she got more respect and less patronising bullshit from customers there than she got from customers in countries that assumed her name was female. Your sister doesn't have to draw attention to her sex. What does it matter if someone who she'll never meet doesn't know her sex?

I wonder what the end game is for the fellas who are still angrily posting selfies of themselves in the women’s toilets - IW, Euan Weddell, and their ilk. Next time Robin is in Parliament, which toilets will he use? Will security guide him to the male facilities? What happens when women challenge him? When will the overall cost/benefit for him tip so that, even to him, it just makes more sense to use the men’s or a gender-neutral option?

Watching with interest.

We can but hope!

I imagine lots of tears, lots of angry men and eventually a fair few men returning back to just being Dave in accounts rather than stunning and brave Davina who loiters in the women's toilets.

Have read them all. Sounds good to me bar one hiccup. I like the one about protecting free speech (so people who hold a philosophical belief that you cannot change gender being covered under the EA). But.. it contradicts with the paragraph about taking disciplinary action against someone who deliberately uses the wrong/right pronoun for a transgender colleague.

If you have the right to believe and express that you don't agree with gender reassignments then why should you be able to force someone to use a specific pronoun? It seems those people just have to say "they forgot" (which genuinely does happen because our brains know who/what we're looking at and language is ingrained by this point) but I don't like that we have this weird, cowardly way of enforcing freedom in our country.

Same with religion. I hate that they had a (forced) update and started letting gay people get married and allowed women in the clergy. No. Leave them to their discrimination and religion finally gets kicked to the curb/kerb when everyone sees it for what it is. Society will decide.

But other than that, it's a massive step in the right direction and I hope all employers adopt this approach. Let's hope they train their managers to follow through and properly monitor who is accessing single-sex spaces.

@LadyHelenaThistle thanks for this.

It does seem to be very good news. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out in the real world, as opposed to "on paper."

Men who have been demanding and have been used to bullying their way into female spaces will not immediately go quietly into their proper sex-based spaces, so we'll likely have some work ahead of us still. I hope that, eventually, everyone will get used to things being back to normal again, and the demands of toddler-like men will be ignored.

Very good news, however, if what you have seen is true.

More good news. It doesn't say much for the collective intellect at the top of the civil service (or the NHS) that it's taken them this long to write it. Suppose it reflects the immense power of the trans lobby in those sectors.

Perhaps it is an indictment of my insufficient baseline skepticism, but I’ve been so disillusioned by this fight against trans ideology in our institutions. Watching the Sandie Peggie tribunal, seeing doctors and NHS admins falsify evidence and beclown themselves by pretending to find the concept of biological sex elusive, and reading the judgment, which lacked basic understanding of what had been said during the tribunal or of the supporting documentation, very much depressed me and gave me a much more pessimistic view of our world. How did we get to the point where this is the calibre of people in charge of things?

Its about time that they delt with this though the compelled speach and adherence to religious observance ie pronoun usage is going to cause issues especially when they use terms like invalidate a person's transgender identity, thats going to get the civil service into hot water with employment tribunals as its compelled speach and belief which are both illegal.
Realistically all they can do is ask you not to use any pronouns for a trans identifying individual in their presence you cannot demand that anybody uses preferred pronouns for anyone else