The EHRC's draft guidance on single-sex spaces is not a neutral administrative update. It tells trans people they must use facilities matching their birth sex rather than who they are, and it is already shifting hospital, employer, and service policies. That is a daily harm, visited on people who are already navigating a healthcare system that frequently fails them. Which is why, when a city leader stands up and says plainly that the guidance is unworkable and that her city will have LGBT people's backs, it is worth paying attention.

What Susan Aitken actually said

At a full council meeting in Glasgow, SNP councillor and council leader Susan Aitken was asked by councillor Declan Blench to reaffirm the council's commitment to trans people and the wider LGBT community. She did not hedge. She said she agreed with trans organisations that the EHRC's draft code of practice is "often contradictory and confusing, providing no clear advice on how services can include trans people." She went further: "I don't believe this guidance does that in its current form."

She also named something that deserves to be said more often in these debates: hate crime against LGBT people is rising. Police Scotland is recording the increases. That is not a backdrop to the guidance debate, it is central to it. The guidance arrives into a climate where trans and LGBT people are already more at risk, and the question of whether public institutions signal welcome or exclusion has real consequences for real safety.

Her closing words were simple: "We take the opportunity to say to our LGBT friends and colleagues that they are welcome here, they are supported, and this city will have your back."

What the guidance actually says

In May 2026, following the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Equality Act 2010 in the For Women Scotland case, the Equality and Human Rights Commission published new draft guidance on single-sex spaces, due to come into effect in mid-July. It states that trans people should use facilities corresponding to their sex assigned at birth. Bathrooms, changing rooms, hospital wards, sports clubs: the guidance sweeps across all of them. A trans woman, it says, cannot use female toilets, though another gender-neutral option should be provided.

It is draft guidance, not new legislation. Parliament has not amended the Equality Act 2010 or the Gender Recognition Act 2004. Trans people still hold legal protections under the characteristic of gender reassignment. The Supreme Court interpreted the Act; it did not rewrite it. And that interpretation has been widely criticised by legal commentators, equality organisations, and human rights advocates as inconsistent with what Parliament intended when those two Acts were passed.

None of that stops the guidance from doing damage in the meantime. When a body with the word "Commission" in its name publishes something this explicit, organisations act on it, whatever its formal status. Employers, NHS trusts, youth groups, sports clubs are already updating their policies. That is the practical reality, and it is the reality trans people are living with right now.

The hospital ward question

One specific change shows more clearly than anything else what this guidance means in practice. Previously, guidance allowed trans people to be accommodated in a ward matching their gender. Under the new EHRC guidance, the default position for NHS settings is that trans patients may be placed in wards matching their birth sex, and moved at the request of other patients.

Think about what that means. You are already unwell, already in a system where, before any of this guidance existed, the majority of trans people reported experiencing transphobia when accessing general healthcare, and many said they had avoided going to their doctor because of it. Now, the moment you are admitted, your trans status becomes visible to every other patient on the ward. You can be moved not because of your clinical need but because another patient objects to your presence. You are being outed by policy, in one of the most vulnerable moments of your life.

This is framed as protecting other patients. The practical effect is to make hospital admission a point of exposure and potential discrimination for trans people, in a system that is already failing them badly.

The claim that this protects women

The argument that excluding trans women from women's spaces protects women depends on a model of trans women as a threat, and that model is not supported by evidence. Trans women are not a danger to other women in shared spaces. The predatory-intruder scenario that animates much of this debate describes something that does not happen in any statistically meaningful way, and conflates the presence of trans women with a risk that has nothing to do with trans identity.

What the guidance does do, concretely, is put trans women at greater risk. A trans woman directed to a men's bathroom or changing room faces real potential for hostility and harm. That is not hypothetical. Positioning the guidance as a protective measure, while that is its actual effect, is a reversal of what protection means.

What local leaders can actually do

Glasgow is not the only city watching this with alarm, but Susan Aitken's intervention matters because it is explicit, it is public, and it names the problem in plain terms rather than offering careful diplomatic distance. That changes how frontline council staff and service providers behave. When a council leader says this guidance is contradictory and that the city will have trans people's backs, that is a signal that inclusion is still the standard being held, whatever national guidance says.

Councils deliver services. They employ people. They set the culture of the organisations that shape daily life in a city. They cannot override the EHRC or the Supreme Court, but they can refuse to go further than they are required to, they can train staff well, they can make sure gender-neutral facilities exist and are not presented as an afterthought, and they can say out loud that trans people are welcome. That is not nothing. At a moment when the noise from the top is hostile, it is rather a lot.

Where things stand

The guidance is draft, it is contested, and the legal picture is still moving. Trans people retain protections under the Equality Act 2010 through the characteristic of gender reassignment: that has not been removed. But the gap between what the law says and what organisations now feel licensed to do is widening, and trans people are the ones living in that gap.

Guidance can be challenged, updated, and replaced. Many people are arguing that Parliament should clarify its original intent through legislation. None of that is fast enough for someone trying to use a changing room today, or being admitted to a ward this week. The harm is immediate even when the legal resolution is not, which is exactly why it matters, right now, when city leaders choose to say clearly which side they are on.

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, medical educator, and founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender diversity, trans healthcare, and the lives that policy decisions shape.