Seven NHS nurses have secured £187,000 in damages from County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust after winning a landmark employment tribunal ruling that the hospital unlawfully required female staff to share changing facilities with a biological male colleague who identified as a woman.
The Trust has also issued a formal apology and committed to providing separate changing, washing and sanitary facilities for biological men and biological women — and has scrapped the “Transitioning in the Workplace” policy that allowed the original situation to arise. The settlement, which does not include legal costs still to be determined, came after two and a half years of what nurses described as pressure, intimidation and institutional indifference to their concerns.
The seven nurses — Bethany Hutchison, Lisa Lockey, Karen Danson, Tracy Hooper, Annice Grundy, Carly Hoy and Jane Peveller — all work at Darlington Memorial Hospital and were supported throughout by the Christian Legal Centre. The dispute began in July 2023 when female nurses raised concerns with management after being required, without warning or consultation, to share their changing room with a biological male colleague known as Rose, described as tall and of strong build. Around 300 women, including teenage staff, had access to the same changing room.
Darlington nurses outside of court
Rather than addressing the concerns, senior HR figures dismissed them internally as “noise in the system,” told nurses they needed to “broaden their mindset” and be “more educated,” and ultimately offered the objecting nurses an alternative — a converted ward manager’s office where belongings had to be placed on the floor, there were no lockers, and the door opened directly onto a public corridor. The nurses used this temporary room for ten months. Rose continued to use the female changing room throughout.
A three-week Employment Tribunal hearing in October and November 2025 exposed deeply troubling conduct by the Trust. Evidence heard included that nurses were pressured to withdraw safeguarding concerns, that one nurse’s PTSD linked to childhood sexual abuse was triggered by encounters in the changing room, and that a pregnant colleague allegedly received inappropriate personal comments about her body from Rose in the changing room. The Trust’s Director of Workforce told the tribunal he believed Rose was “just a large woman.” A senior NHS executive had privately warned the policy amounted to “politically correct nonsense” before leaving the organisation. In a further failure, the Trust did not ensure the nurses’ temporary changing room was fire safe.
On 16 January 2026, Employment Judge Seamus Sweeney handed down a landmark ruling. He found that requiring the nurses to share a changing room with a biological male “had the effect of violating the dignity of the Claimants and creating for the Claimants a hostile, humiliating and degrading environment,” and that the Trust’s failure to address the concerns “engaged in unwanted conduct related to sex and gender reassignment which had the effect of creating for the Claimants a hostile and intimidating environment.” The judgment followed the Supreme Court’s April 2025 ruling on the definition of “woman” in equalities law.
The Trust’s apology acknowledged it had “a responsibility to provide a safe, respectful and inclusive working environment for everyone” and that the tribunal’s findings made clear it had “not got this right.” It added that it had “not adequately considered your concerns, formally or informally” and expressed “sincere regret.”
The costs on all sides are striking. The Trust spent £603,000 of public money defending its position — more than three times the damages ultimately awarded to the nurses. The Trust’s own regulatory record is also under scrutiny: the Care Quality Commission last week found it is “unsafe,” has a “blame culture” and is “badly led.”
Four of the nurses — Bethany Hutchison, Lisa Lockey, Annice Grundy and Tracey Hooper — continue to face potential investigation by the Nursing and Midwifery Council over allegations of “transphobia” and “hate crime” for speaking publicly about their case. The referrals were made in October 2025, despite the tribunal subsequently ruling that going to the media was “a protected act.” Leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch wrote to the NMC in April calling for the cases to be dropped, describing them as “weak” and “inconsistent with both the tribunal outcomes and the settled legal position on biological sex.”
Bethany Hutchison, president of the Darlington Nursing Union — the union the nurses formed themselves after receiving no support from Unison or the Royal College of Nursing — said: “We have done this, not just for ourselves, but for our colleagues who were too afraid or unable to speak up, and for every woman and girl in the country. This outcome is a vindication of our stand for dignity, privacy, and common sense.”
