For some transgender men and women – and the campaigners who support them – the updated guidance confirms their worst fears. Stephen Whittle, who spearheaded the campaign for gender recognition across the UK in the 1990s, was visiting the Chelsea flower show when the Equality and Human Rights Commission published its updated code of practice. It confirmed that single-sex spaces such as toilets and changing rooms must be used on the basis of biological sex, and that transgender people may not access those that accord with their lived gender.
Whittle, 70, said he used male facilities as he has done for 50 years. His focus on Friday was “trying to calm people down and say: ‘Stay cool; we’ll get through this’.” For many in the trans and wider LGBTQ+ community, there has been a sense of limbo since the supreme court ruling on biological sex in April 2025, as they looked to the watchdog for practical guidance.
Blake, a data analyst based near Liverpool, described watching the news as “kind of humiliating”. He said: “Having this frame of ‘where are people going to pee?’ It’s such a reduction of the problems we have in our lives, like access to healthcare, and also a real day-to-day struggle.” Katie Russell, chief executive of Support After Rape and Sexual Violence Leeds, said her service has taken legal advice and is making changes to governing documents, but remains women-centred including trans women.
Andrew Butler, campaign lead for Lush, called the guidance “a significant setback for human rights in the UK”. He said: “It puts frontline service providers, retail workers and many others in the position of policing people’s gender based on perception.” Kate Nicholls, chair of UKHospitality, welcomed the clarification that gender-neutral toilets are acceptable. Alice, an anaesthetist in England, said she has been coordinating with colleagues to ensure gender-neutral facilities are available, but her old building is limited.
