Civil servants in UK told to let self-identifying trans staff use whichever single-sex toilets they want under official guidance
Civil servants should let people who identify as use whichever single-sex toilet they want, new guidance has said.
Government officials were given a ‘ Identity and Intersex HR’ handbook which provides advice for those who identify as transgender, non-binary or intersex and their managers.
The guide, written in collaboration with a trans rights group, says ‘all individuals have the right to express their identity at work and present in their gender.’
The new rules aim to be inclusive for members of these communities, but some female civil servants have raised objections to the plans.
One member of the civil service and did not want to be identified, told : ‘Women get accused of being prudish about who uses their toilets, but they are intimate places and this adds to a feeling of a lack of privacy.’
The Equality and Human Rights Commission ruled in April that trans people could be excluded from single-sex services if the reasons for doing so were ‘justifiable and proportionate’.
The Times reported that British civil servants were told in training that it was impossible to define what a woman was and that saying ‘adult human female’ could be transphobic to say.
However, we are clear that it is the important principle that spaces reserved for women and girls are maintained, in line with the Equality Act. This guidance is from 2019 and we keep all internal guidance under regular review.
