NHS Psychiatrist Sues Manchester Trust Over Female Wards After 2025 Sex Ruling

3 articles · Updated · Fox News · Sep 14

A senior psychiatrist identified as Dr. A filed an Employment Tribunal claim against Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, alleging discrimination and harassment after she raised safeguarding concerns about male patients placed on female psychiatric wards.
The case centers on an alleged exposure incident in which a bearded male patient identifying as a woman showed male genitalia to female patients, was briefly moved to a male ward after complaints, then returned to the women’s ward.
Dr. A says the trust resisted her questions for three years and, even the day after the U.K. Supreme Court’s April 2025 ruling defining sex as biological sex in the Equality Act, told staff there would be no immediate policy changes.
The trust now says it is auditing policies to reflect the ruling, while NHS England is still reviewing its 2019 guidance that told hospitals to accommodate transgender patients according to gender presentation.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s statutory code, effective in August, says trans women can be excluded from women-only services because their sex is male, sharpening pressure on NHS providers to rewrite single-sex ward rules.