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There are moments in public life when a single set of guidelines becomes a lightning rod for much deeper anxieties, and the recent controversy around single-sex spaces in the United Kingdom is exactly such a moment. On one side, there are transgender people who say they feel increasingly targeted, policed, and pushed out of everyday public life. On the other side, there are women who say they want to preserve spaces where their privacy, dignity, and safety are protected. Caught in the middle are service providers, local councils, and ordinary citizens trying to understand what the law actually requires. Into this charged atmosphere stepped Mary-Ann Stephenson, the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, with a plea for calm accuracy. She accused trans activists of spreading misinformation about the new code of practice on single-sex spaces, and she insisted that the guidance does not create new law, does not abolish protections for transgender people, and does not require humiliating checks at public toilets. But her intervention did not settle the debate. Instead, it highlighted just how far apart the two sides have become, and how easily fear and rumour can drown out the careful language of legal guidance. For many trans people, the code feels like yet another signal that they are not welcome in public life. For many women, it feels like a long-overdue clarification that biological sex still matters in certain settings. And for everyone else, it feels like a confusing, emotionally exhausting conflict in which every word is scrutinised and every claim is contested. Stephenson’s central message, repeated in her writing for The Times, was simple: the guidance is not the catastrophe its critics describe. But the very fact that she felt the need to say this shows how much misinformation has already taken hold.
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To understand the controversy, it helps to look at what the code actually says and why it was introduced. The code came into force in August, following a landmark Supreme Court ruling from April 2025. That ruling confirmed that, under the Equality Act, a service can only be classed as single-sex if it is provided on the basis of biological sex. In other words, if a gym advertises a women-only session, it is allowed to restrict that session to people who were born female, even if a transgender woman has a Gender Recognition Certificate. This was a significant legal clarification, but Stephenson was at pains to point out that it was not a wholesale rewriting of rights. Writing in The Times, she said: “You could be forgiven for thinking that the guidance strips trans people of their rights, bans them from public spaces and requires sex checks at public toilets. Were that the case, claims that it’s ‘unworkable’ and ‘discriminatory’ would be justified. But none of that is true.” She went on to explain that the Supreme Court judgment means single-sex services must be provided on the basis of biological sex, but that does not mean every service must now be single-sex. It also does not mean trans people have lost their protection from discrimination, harassment, and victimisation under the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. In other words, a trans woman can still be protected from unfair treatment, and a service provider can still choose to offer mixed-sex or inclusive services. What the code does is clarify the boundary between single-sex provision and other forms of provision. But in the heated public debate, those careful distinctions were often lost. Instead, the code was portrayed by some as a “bathroom ban” and by others as a necessary defence of women’s spaces. Stephenson’s point was that both of those characterisations are oversimplifications, and that oversimplification is dangerous because it fuels real fear and real anger on both sides.
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The critics, however, were not convinced. LGBT+ groups lined up to condemn the revised code, arguing that it leaves trans people in the UK with fewer rights than they had before the Supreme Court judgment. TransActual, a transgender rights group, described the guidance as a “bathroom ban” and a “huge rollback for human rights.” The Good Law Project, a legal campaign group, accused the Equality and Human Rights Commission of producing “discriminatory” and “unworkable” guidance, and warned that service providers who followed it would be “causing immense harm, and helping to strip trans people of their rights.” These are strong words, and they reflect a genuine sense of betrayal among many trans people and their allies. For them, the code is not a neutral legal clarification; it is a green light for exclusion. They point to the real-world consequences of such guidance: trans people being challenged in toilets, refused service in changing rooms, and made to feel that their very existence is up for debate. Zack Polanski, speaking at the Green Party’s annual conference in Brighton, captured this mood when he said that trans people were being “legislated and discriminated against,” adding that they were being “harassed out of toilets, policed in public places, scared to go about their daily lives.” His words were met with applause, but they also highlighted the emotional weight of the issue. This is not, for critics, an abstract legal argument about statutory interpretation. It is about whether trans people can move through the world without fear. The accusation of misinformation cuts both ways: critics of the code believe that Stephenson and the EHRC are the ones misleading the public, by presenting a guidance document as benign when its practical effect, in their view, is to legitimise discrimination. The gap between these two perspectives seems almost impossible to bridge, because each side is operating from a different set of assumptions about what fairness means and what safety requires.
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The resistance to the code was not limited to activist groups. Local councils, too, moved to distance themselves from the guidance. In the south London borough of Lambeth, councillors passed a motion agreeing to “proceed with non-implementation” of the guidance, “should officers advise that this is a lawful option.” The council’s leader, Martin Abrams, and deputy leader, Natalie Kane, signed an open letter to the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, on the day the code took effect. They were joined by leaders from five other London boroughs: Hackney, Haringey, Lewisham, Southwark, and Waltham Forest. In their letter, they declared that “trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary identities are fundamentally valid.” They went on to say: “It is simply unacceptable that the Code of Practice is harmful to the rights of trans people and will make their exclusion from public life more likely, not less.” This was a powerful political statement, and it showed that opposition to the code was not confined to the margins. These are elected officials who run public services in some of the most diverse parts of the country, and they were saying, in effect, that they would not implement guidance they believed to be harmful. Their stance raised difficult questions about the relationship between national equality law and local decision-making. Can a council simply choose not to follow a code of practice? The answer, legally, is complicated. A code of practice is not the same as a statute, and there may be room for interpretation. But the symbolic force of the letter was clear: these councils wanted to send a message that they stood with trans people, and that they would not accept a framing of rights that pits one vulnerable group against another. For trans activists, the council rebellion was a rare piece of good news in a gloomy landscape. For supporters of the code, it was an example of how political pressure can override legal clarity. And for Stephenson, it was further evidence that the code had been misunderstood and misrepresented.
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In her response to the backlash, Stephenson tried to strike a conciliatory tone, even as she defended the code. She acknowledged that “uncertainty about their rights has caused real alarm for many trans people,” and she expressed sympathy for the distress they were feeling. But she also suggested that “some of the commentary surrounding the code has worsened that distress.” In other words, she was saying that the very people claiming to defend trans rights were, by exaggerating the effects of the guidance, making things worse. This is a delicate argument to make, because it risks sounding dismissive of legitimate fears. Stephenson seemed aware of this, and she took care to balance her criticism with recognition. She said: “We must also recognise the distress of women unable to access single-sex facilities. Women who believe that their right to privacy, dignity or safety have not been properly protected deserve to have those concerns taken seriously too.” She then offered what she saw as a path forward: “Recognising women’s need for access to single-sex services doesn’t require us to dismiss the rights of trans people and recognising the vulnerability of trans people doesn’t require us to dismiss women’s concerns.” This is the kind of even-handed statement that sounds reasonable in the abstract, but in the heat of the debate, it is hard for either side to hear. For trans people, any mention of women’s concerns can feel like a code for excluding them. For women who have campaigned for single-sex spaces, any mention of trans people’s rights can feel like a threat to hard-won protections. Stephenson’s position, essentially, is that both sets of concerns are valid and can coexist. But the very fact that she has to say this shows how polarised the conversation has become. The middle ground, if it exists, is very hard to see from the trenches.
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Ultimately, this controversy is about more than a code of practice. It is about how a society handles the tension between different kinds of rights, different experiences of vulnerability, and different visions of equality. The Equality Act was designed to protect everyone, but it was never going to resolve every conflict on its own. The Supreme Court ruling clarified the legal meaning of “single-sex,” but it did not, and could not, settle the moral and emotional questions that surround gender and public space. What the debate has revealed is a profound failure of trust. Trans people do not believe that the institutions meant to protect them will do so. Women who want single-sex spaces do not believe that their concerns will be taken seriously unless they are written into law. And both sides accuse the other of spreading misinformation, which only deepens the sense of grievance. Stephenson’s intervention, whatever one thinks of the code itself, was an attempt to lower the temperature. She asked people to read the guidance carefully, to resist hyperbole, and to recognise that the law still protects trans people from discrimination. But in a climate where every statement is filtered through suspicion, even a plea for accuracy can be seen as an attack. The way forward, if there is one, will require more than legal clarification. It will require listening, not just to the loudest voices, but to the quiet fears of ordinary people on both sides. It will require acknowledging that a trans woman who is scared to use a public toilet and a woman who is scared to share a changing room with a biological male are both expressing real anxieties, even if those anxieties are difficult to reconcile. And it will require a willingness to hold complexity without collapsing into caricature. That is a tall order, but it is the only way to move beyond a debate that, at the moment, seems to be causing more pain than it is resolving. The code may be here to stay, but the conversation is far from over.