The latest from the Hampstead women’s bathing pond saga, from the Times:
A council failed to publicise a warning from the equalities watchdog that its policy of allowing males identifying as female to use a historic women’s bathing pond was likely to be “unlawful”, it has emerged.
The City of London Corporation was also criticised for not making clear to the public that since 2019, when it introduced its transgender admissions policy, it had not considered the women’s and men’s ponds on Hampstead Heath — the 800-acre green space it manages in north London — to be single-sex.
The developments have come to light days before the local authority is set to defend itself in the High Court against claims by the campaign group Sex Matters that its admissions policy breached equality laws….
Sex Matters, a charity that campaigns for single-sex rights, signalled in August last year that it was planning to lodge a judicial review in the High Court against the admissions policy.
It has now emerged that in a letter sent the same month the Equality and Human Rights Committee (EHRC) had advised City of London that its policy was likely to be illegal.
The letter from the EHRC deputy chief executive Penny Hobman on August 27, obtained under freedom of information laws, stated: “Your policy appears to be based on a concept of ‘self-identification’ as a criterion for admission to separate or single-sex services.
“This fails to engage with sex and gender reassignment as separate and distinct characteristics and in our view your policy is likely to be unlawful as a result.”
Hobman also reminded the local authority of the Supreme Court’s ruling in April last year on the meaning of “sex” under the Equality Act 2010.
She continued: “Our concerns about your policy/guidance arose before this judgment, but the case has clarified that, for the purposes of the Act, a person’s sex is based on biological sex as recorded at birth. There is no legal right to access single-sex spaces based on self-identified gender.
“We advise that you reconsider the content of your policy. When you publish a revised policy, it must accurately reflect the law. We would encourage you to take specialist legal advice.”
What the Corporation did was admit its ponds were no longer single-sex, and promised a consultation. After the consultation, it confirmed that the ponds would continue to be trans inclusive.
It’s fairly obvious that there are highly-placed activists within the Corporation who are pushing this trans-inclusive policy. There are three poinds on the Heath: men-only, women-only, and mixed. The only reason that trans-identifying men would want to access the women-only pond, clearly, is to make a point – and, most likely, to leer.
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