A panel of senior UN human rights experts has warned that the UK's revised Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions, and Associations, which came into force on 5 August, risks institutionalising discrimination against transgender and gender-diverse people. The experts say the Code treats inclusion as non-compliance, leaving providers advised to exclude trans women from women's services rather than weighing each situation on its own merits.
This is not a fringe opinion or a campaign group's press release. These are Special Procedures experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council: the Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, and the Working Group on human rights and transnational corporations. They serve in their individual capacity, independent of any government, and they have been watching the UK's approach to this question closely.
They warned in February 2026 that elements of the draft guidance appeared incompatible with the UK's international human rights obligations. Now that the revised Code is in force, they have warned again.
What does the revised Code actually say?
The Code treats a service that includes both cisgender and transgender women as a mixed-sex service. The practical effect is stark: except for membership-based associations, providers are advised that a women's service must either exclude transgender women or open itself to all men. The alternative on offer is that trans people use services designated for their sex as recorded at birth, or use separate facilities where those exist.
The UN experts put the problem clearly: "When legal guidance effectively presents exclusion as the means of complying with the law, discrimination risks becoming institutionalised rather than assessed on the basis of necessity and proportionality."
That word, proportionality, matters here. The Equality Act 2010 already allows for single-sex services in limited, justified circumstances. A service provider can exclude a trans woman if there is a specific, proportionate reason in that particular context. What the Code does is turn that case-by-case judgment into a blanket steer toward exclusion, which is a very different thing. The Act has not changed. The guidance has changed how providers are being told to read it.
Why does guidance carry so much weight?
I hear this question often, and it is a fair one. The Equality Act 2010 is the statute. The guidance is not the law. So why does it matter so much what the guidance says?
It matters because most service providers, a leisure centre, a domestic abuse refuge, a GP surgery, a homeless shelter, are not reading the Act directly. They are reading the guidance issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and they are doing what it tells them. When that guidance frames exclusion as the compliant, safe option, exclusion becomes the default. Not because anyone has weighed the circumstances. Not because there is a specific, justified reason in this case. But because the official document said so.
This is how discrimination gets built into institutions quietly. No individual decision feels particularly momentous. The guidance just nudges everyone in the same direction, and the cumulative effect is that trans people are systematically excluded from services they have a legal right to use.
The disclosure problem the experts named
The UN experts raised something that deserves more attention than it has received. Implementing this Code will, in practice, require transgender people to disclose their gender identity in order to access services. And disclosure carries real risk: harassment, refusal, and exposure to exactly the kind of scrutiny the Code purports to be managing.
Worse, the experts noted that it will expose all women to scrutiny based on gender stereotypes. Intrusive questioning. Demands for personal information. A system designed around checking who counts as a woman will inevitably be used against women who look or present outside what someone at a front desk considers sufficiently feminine. That is not a hypothetical. It is what happens when gender policing becomes official policy.
The experts were direct: "Any request for information relating to a person's sex or gender identity must pursue a legitimate objective, be strictly necessary and proportionate, and entail appropriate safeguards for privacy and dignity. Such enquiries should never become routine or discriminatory."
Routine is exactly what the Code risks making them.
International human rights law and what it actually requires
The UK has obligations under international human rights law that sit alongside, and inform how we should read, domestic legislation. The experts are not asking for trans people to be given special treatment. They are asking for the same thing international law has always asked for: that any measure restricting rights be lawful, pursue a legitimate aim, and be necessary and proportionate.
They were also careful to acknowledge the importance of protecting the rights of women and girls, including to safety, privacy, and freedom from violence. Nobody in this discussion is arguing otherwise. The point is that international human rights law requires those protections to be inclusive of all women and girls, including transgender and intersex women. The two obligations do not conflict. They overlap. They are complementary.
The experts said it plainly: "Human rights are not a zero-sum exercise. Protecting the rights of women and girls in all their diversity and protecting the rights of transgender, gender-diverse and intersex persons are equal, overlapping, and complementary obligations."
That framing matters, because so much of the public debate has been conducted as though one group's rights must come at the other's expense. That is not what the law says. It is not what human rights require. And it is not, in my experience, what most women actually believe when they think it through carefully.
What the experts are asking for
The UN experts have urged the Government and the Equality and Human Rights Commission to monitor the impact of the guidance and review any provisions that are producing discrimination. They are not calling for the Code to be scrapped overnight. They are calling for what the law already requires: genuine assessment of necessity and proportionality, case by case, rather than a blanket steer that treats exclusion as compliance.
That is a reasonable ask. It is also, for the people who depend on these services, an urgent one. A trans woman trying to access a domestic abuse refuge, a shelter, a medical service, or a community space does not have the luxury of waiting for a slow institutional review. She needs the service now. Every month the guidance points in the wrong direction is another month of doors closing in faces that already have too few doors open to them.
Where does this leave trans people in the UK right now?
The honest answer is: in a difficult position, and one that is not of their making. The Code is in force. It is shaping decisions being made today. The Supreme Court ruling that preceded it interpreted the Equality Act in a way that many legal experts, and now multiple UN bodies, have criticised. But the Act itself has not changed, and the ruling is one court's interpretation, not the final word on what Parliament intended.
Trans people in the UK retain legal protections under the Equality Act 2010 through the characteristic of gender reassignment. Those protections have not been repealed. What has changed is the official guidance on how service providers should apply the law, and that guidance is now being scrutinised internationally as well as domestically.
What I would say to any trans person navigating this right now is that the international human rights framework is on your side. The UN has said so clearly, and twice. The fight is real and it is hard, but it is not being fought in isolation. There are people across the world, with real expertise and real authority, who are paying attention and saying, loudly, that this is wrong.
If there is a topic that you would like me to cover, just let Sammy know.
Dr Helen Webberley is a Gender Specialist, Medical Educator, writer, and advocate, and the founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender diversity, trans healthcare, and the world around them.
Comments