NHS told it must act after ruling on gender

NHS chiefs are working to overhaul guidelines for single-sex spaces in thousands of hospitals and GP surgeries after the equality watchdog warned they would be pursued if they failed to do so.

- Andrew Gregory Severin Carrell Rajeev Syal

The British Transport Police (BTP) became the first to change policies yesterday amid the fallout from the supreme court ruling on the legal definition of a woman, piling pressure on the health service and other organisations to revamp their guidance.

Current NHS guidance in England says transgender people should be accommodated based on how they dress, their names and their pronouns. Under Wednesday's ruling that a woman is defined by biological sex under the Equality Act 2010, this would be scrapped.

Senior NHS legal officials and estates and facilities managers are now racing to draw up proposals for how hospitals, community care centres and GP practices should reflect the ruling, sources have told the Guardian.

The judgment poses a challenge for the NHS, which has an estate spanning 25m sq metres in England alone, where infrastructure repair bills top £14bn. The issue is further complicated by the fact that health policy and spending are devolved in Wales and Scotland.