In advance of today’s Goldsmid ward by-election, PSHEbrighton wrote to all candidates seeking their views on safeguarding, evidence standards and the implications of the recent NHS investigation into WellBN.
We also previously wrote to school governors across Brighton & Hove regarding safeguarding concerns raised by parents over a number of years.
Despite the publication of a major NHS report identifying serious failings in the treatment of children and young people experiencing gender-related distress, we received only one response from a Goldsmid by-election candidate, Luke Willmoth.
We are grateful to Mr Willmoth for taking the time to engage, regardless of whether residents agree with all of his views.
More striking, however, is the wider silence.
Parents, clinicians and residents have repeatedly raised questions about safeguarding, professional curiosity and accountability in Brighton & Hove. Those questions have become more pressing, not less, following publication of the WellBN investigation.
Yet many of the public bodies and office-holders responsible for oversight have remained reluctant to engage directly with those concerns.
PSHEbrighton believes that safeguarding questions should never be treated as politically inconvenient. Public confidence depends upon a willingness to answer difficult questions openly, particularly when concerns have been raised consistently over a number of years.
We remain willing to meet and engage constructively with elected representatives, candidates, governors and public bodies from across the political spectrum.
ENDS
PSHEbrighton’s Questions to Candidates
Dear Candidate,
I am writing on behalf of PSHE Brighton, a non-party-political group of parents, carers, and professionals concerned with safeguarding, evidence-based practice, and accountability in schools.
Please find attached two documents for your consideration:
Our Questions to Candidates for the Goldsmid By-Election 2026 A short campaign briefing flyer outlining the issues being raised by local parents We wish to emphasise that the matters raised are not about proposing new policy frameworks, but about the application of existing law. The legal position in relation to safeguarding, single-sex provision, and parental involvement is already set out in statute and supporting guidance. Recent developments—including the Cass Review, the Supreme Court judgment in For Women Scotland, and updated guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission—serve to clarify and reinforce the correct interpretation of that existing framework, rather than to introduce new obligations.
In particular, the EHRC draft Code of Practice does not create new law. It provides guidance on how organisations should implement the Equality Act 2010 in practice, including the lawful operation of single-sex services and facilities. In the context of schools, this sits alongside existing statutory requirements governing school premises and safeguarding duties.
We would therefore be grateful if you could provide brief responses to the questions set out in the attached document, which focus on: transparency around single-sex facilities in schools parental involvement in matters relating to social transition the review of local authority guidance in light of current law safeguarding oversight and accountability engagement with concerned parents and carers We intend to share candidate responses with local residents to support informed engagement ahead of the by-election.
If possible, we would appreciate your response by Friday, June 19th 2026.
We write to ask that the attached Open Letter be formally circulated to all members of the Governing Body. A hard copy of the letter is also being sent via Royal Mail.
The letter addresses recent developments in safeguarding, statutory duty, and legal accountability, particularly in light of the Cass Review, relevant case law, and updated Department for Education guidance. It is intended to assist governors in discharging their responsibilities under Section 175 of the Education Act 2002 and to ensure that current risks are properly identified, recorded, and addressed at board level.
Given the nature of the issues raised, I would be grateful if this could be:
shared with all governors in full
noted for consideration at the next governing body meeting
recorded as a matter of safeguarding governance
This is not a policy submission, but a governance-focused briefing highlighting areas where legal and regulatory expectations have materially evolved.
Please confirm once the letter has been circulated.Yours sincerely, The Founders & Families of PSHE Brighton
“Fell far short of what could be considered safe or appropriate.”
Those are not the words of campaigners, journalists, politicians, or critics.
They are the words used by NHS Sussex to describe the care provided to children and young people receiving gender-related hormone treatment through WellBN in Brighton.¹
The investigation’s findings are stark.
Investigators identified 78 children and young people who may have experienced actual or potential harm. They found that, in 22 cases, prescriptions were issued without a face-to-face consultation. In 75 cases, there had been no referral to a paediatric endocrinologist. Necessary physical monitoring was often absent. Blood tests were frequently not undertaken. Records relating to assessment, consent, and follow-up were found wanting. Most strikingly of all, investigators concluded that none of the clinicians whose care was reviewed were professionally competent to initiate or assume responsibility for prescribing these medications without specialist support or oversight.²
These are not minor procedural failings.
They are findings that strike at the heart of safeguarding, governance, professional accountability, and public trust.
For the young people and families directly affected, the consequences are deeply personal. For Brighton and Hove as a whole, however, the WellBN investigation raises a wider and more uncomfortable question:
How were legitimate safeguarding concerns treated when they were first raised?
The Questions Were Always About Safeguarding
Much of the public debate surrounding gender identity has been characterised as a political or ideological dispute.
The WellBN investigation reveals something different.
At its core, this was always a safeguarding issue.
The questions now being asked by NHS investigators are remarkably similar to the questions parents, campaigners, and concerned professionals have been asking for years.
Were proper assessments carried out Were alternative explanations explored? Were parents appropriately involved? Were risks properly evaluated? Was informed consent genuinely possible? Were children receiving evidence-based care?
These are not partisan questions.
They are the ordinary questions that responsible adults ask whenever vulnerable children are involved.
The significance of the WellBN investigation therefore extends far beyond one GP practice. It forces us to examine how institutions respond when safeguarding concerns challenge prevailing assumptions.
Brighton’s Long Journey from Certainty to Scrutiny
To understand why this matters, it is necessary to understand Brighton’s recent history.
For more than a decade, Brighton and Hove was frequently presented as a model of progressive practice in matters relating to gender identity. The city’s Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit was widely promoted. Schools, public bodies, and healthcare providers were encouraged to adopt approaches centred upon affirmation, social transition, and gender identity.
Those who questioned aspects of these approaches were often assured that professional consensus was settled.
Yet the trajectory of events over recent years tells a different story.
First came growing international concern about the evidence base underpinning medical interventions for children experiencing gender-related distress.
Then came the Cass Review.
Dr Hilary Cass’s independent review concluded that the evidence supporting many interventions was unexpectedly weak and that young people were often entering treatment pathways without the rigorous assessment processes normally expected for interventions carrying potentially significant and irreversible consequences.³
NHS England subsequently ended the routine prescribing of puberty blockers for children outside formal research settings and fundamentally revised its model of care.⁴
Now NHS Sussex has conducted a major patient safety investigation into WellBN.
The trajectory matters.
For years Brighton was presented as a model.
Then the assumptions underpinning that model were challenged.
Then national policy changed.
Now local practice has been subjected to formal investigation.
The lesson is not that every concern raised by parents was necessarily correct.
The lesson is that many concerns dismissed as unnecessary, exaggerated, or alarmist turned out to be worthy of serious examination.
When Concerns Became “Baseless Smears”
One episode in particular now takes on a significance that was perhaps not obvious at the time.
In 2023, community activist Adrian Hart, speaking in connection with concerns raised through PSHEbrighton, challenged Brighton & Hove City Council regarding safeguarding concerns associated with local gender identity policies. The issues included parental notification, social transition, breast binding, safeguarding oversight, and the operation of the Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit.
In response, Council Leader Bella Sankey described the claims and accusations being made as “baseless smears.”⁵
Looking back, that exchange deserves careful reflection.
Parents were not demanding that schools adopt a particular ideology.
They were asking whether safeguarding procedures were being followed.
They were asking whether parents should be informed when significant interventions were taking place.
They were asking whether vulnerable children experiencing distress should receive careful assessment rather than automatic affirmation.
Those questions were characterised as smears.
Three years later, NHS Sussex concluded that care had “fallen far short of what could be considered safe or appropriate.”
No serious person claims that every concern raised by parents was correct.
That is not the point.
The question is whether those concerns were examined with the seriousness that safeguarding demands.
The WellBN investigation suggests that, too often, they were not.
The Cost of Institutional Certainty
There is a deeper lesson here.
The central lesson of the Cass Review and the WellBN investigation is not that one side of a political argument was entirely right and the other entirely wrong.
It is that institutions dealing with vulnerable children should proceed with humility.
Where evidence is uncertain, caution is a virtue.
Where consequences may be irreversible, scrutiny is a necessity.
And where safeguarding concerns are raised, they should be examined rather than dismissed.
Institutions are most vulnerable when a prevailing orthodoxy becomes so dominant that questioning it is treated as evidence of bad faith. At that point scrutiny declines, challenge diminishes, and governance weakens.
The result is not better safeguarding.
It is poorer safeguarding.
The WellBN investigation should remind every public body that safeguarding depends upon a culture in which difficult questions are welcomed rather than discouraged.
Public confidence is strengthened not when institutions claim certainty, but when they demonstrate a willingness to test their own assumptions.
Why Governors Should Read This Report
The lessons of WellBN extend far beyond healthcare.
Every governor in Brighton and Hove should read the investigation.
Not because schools are healthcare providers, but because the questions NHS investigators are now asking are precisely the questions governors are expected to ask of school leaders.
How are safeguarding risks assessed?
How are parents involved?
What evidence underpins policy decisions?
How are competing rights balanced?
Who is accountable when concerns are raised?
What mechanisms exist for challenge and scrutiny?
Governors are not ceremonial figures. They carry statutory responsibilities relating to safeguarding, child welfare, legal compliance, risk management, and accountability.⁶
Moreover, governors now operate in a markedly different environment from that which existed when many current policies were first introduced. The Cass Review, revised NHS guidance, the Supreme Court’s clarification of the meaning of sex in law, updated EHRC guidance, and evolving safeguarding requirements all require careful consideration.⁷
The purpose of governance is not to ratify decisions already made elsewhere.
The purpose of governance is to ask difficult questions before problems become scandals.
Why PSHEbrighton’s Campaign Matters
This is why PSHEbrighton’s current governor campaign matters.
The campaign did not emerge because of WellBN.
Rather, WellBN demonstrates why the campaign is necessary.
In May 2026, PSHEbrighton issued an Open Letter to Governors together with a detailed safeguarding briefing outlining the responsibilities governing bodies carry towards pupils, parents, and staff.⁸ The organisation subsequently launched its Ask Your School campaign, providing parents with practical questions they can raise with governors and school leaders regarding safeguarding, parental engagement, confidentiality arrangements, external providers, sex-based rights, policy transparency, and legal compliance.⁹
The purpose of the campaign is not to refight old ideological battles.
It is to ensure that governors understand their responsibilities before problems emerge.
The city has already experienced what happens when concerns are dismissed and assumptions go unchallenged.
The lesson of WellBN is that accountability delayed is accountability denied.
A Lesson Brighton Cannot Afford to Ignore
Before the findings were published, residents addressing Brighton & Hove’s Health & Wellbeing Board warned that NHS England had already identified indications that patient harm may have occurred and questioned whether concerns had been acted upon promptly enough.¹⁰
Those warnings deserve reflection.
The issue is not merely that mistakes were made.
The issue is that warnings were raised.
Questions were asked.
Concerns were voiced.
And too often those concerns were dismissed rather than examined.
The children identified in the WellBN investigation cannot be given back the years in which these questions should have been asked.
The responsibility now falls upon every governor, head teacher, clinician, councillor, and public official in this city to ensure that future children do not pay the same price for institutional certainty.
Safeguarding begins when someone is willing to ask an uncomfortable question.
It fails when nobody is willing to hear it.
What Parents Can Do
Parents and carers who wish to engage constructively with their child’s school can begin by asking a simple question:
How do governors assure themselves that safeguarding remains at the centre of decision-making?
PSHEbrighton’s Ask Your School campaign provides a practical framework for these conversations and offers resources to help parents engage effectively with governors and school leaders.
The WellBN investigation demonstrates why this matters.
The best time to ask questions is before failures occur, not after they are exposed.
References
¹ NHS Sussex, Patient Safety Investigation into Gender-Related Prescribing at WellBN, 2026.
² NHS Sussex findings as reported in investigation summaries and contemporaneous reporting; see also Hannah Barnes, “Children Potentially Harmed by NHS Gender Treatments,” The Times, 11 June 2026.
³ Hilary Cass, Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People: Final Report (London: Department of Health and Social Care, 2024).
⁴ NHS England, Clinical Policy: Puberty Suppressing Hormones for Children and Adolescents who have Gender Incongruence/Dysphoria, March 2024.
⁵ Frank le Duc, “Parents seek apology from council leader for calling their concerns ‘baseless smears’,” Brighton & Hove News, 28 October 2023.
⁶ Department for Education, Keeping Children Safe in Education (2025); Governance Handbook.
⁷ UK Supreme Court, For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC; Equality and Human Rights Commission guidance; Department for Education safeguarding guidance.
⁸ PSHEbrighton, Open Letter to School Governors and Governor Safeguarding Briefing, May 2026.
⁹ PSHEbrighton, Ask Your School campaign resources, 2026.
Recent developments, including the Cass Review, the Supreme Court’s judgment in For Women Scotland, updated Equality and Human Rights Commission draft explanatory guidance and changes to national safeguarding expectations, mean many schools are reviewing policies relating to sex, privacy, safeguarding and parental involvement.
This campaign does not ask schools to adopt new legal obligations. It asks parents to understand how existing legal and safeguarding duties are being implemented in practice.
What This Means for Parents
Parents are entitled to ask whether a school’s policies comply with the Equality Act 2010, the School Premises (England) Regulations 2012, safeguarding duties under the Education Act 2002, and statutory guidance such as Keeping Children Safe in Education. These obligations sit alongside the Supreme Court’s clarification of the meaning of sex and the EHRC’s draft explanatory Code of Practice.
These are not matters of opinion or ideology. They are questions of law, safeguarding, governance, and accountability.
TAKE ACTIONNOW
The Key Laws and Guidance Parents Should Know
1. Equality Act 2010 The Equality Act 2010 is the principal anti-discrimination legislation in England, Scotland, and Wales. It protects a number of characteristics, including sex and gender reassignment, and provides the legal framework governing single-sex services and discrimination claims.¹
2. Supreme Court Clarification on the Meaning of Sex In 2025, the Supreme Court clarified that references to “sex” within the Equality Act refer to biological sex for the purposes of the Act. This judgment forms the legal background to the EHRC draft Code and its interpretation of single-sex provision.²
3. EHRC Draft Code of Practice (2026) The explanatory draft guidance explains how the Equality Act should be applied by service providers, public authorities, schools, and other organisations. While it is not primary legislation, courts may take it into account when determining whether organisations have complied with equality law.³
4. School Premises (England) Regulations 2012 Separate legislation requires schools to provide single-sex facilities. The School Premises (England) Regulations 2012 mandate separate toilet facilities for boys and girls from the age of eight and suitable separate changing facilities for pupils aged eleven and over.⁴
5. Department for Education: Advice on Standards for School Premises This statutory guidance supports the Regulations and explains how schools should meet those requirements in practice, reinforcing the expectation that single-sex provision must be effective, not merely nominal.⁵
6. Education Act 2002 – Section 175 Section 175 places a statutory duty on governing bodies of maintained schools to make arrangements for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of pupils. This duty is non-delegable and sits at the heart of governance responsibility.⁶
7. Keeping Children Safe in Education This is statutory guidance issued under the Education Act. Governing bodies and school leaders must have regard to it when discharging safeguarding responsibilities, including risk assessment, oversight, and policy implementation.⁷
8. Woodland v Essex County Council The Supreme Court confirmed that schools owe pupils a non-delegable duty of care. A school cannot avoid responsibility by relying on third parties, contractors, or external guidance where harm arises.⁸
9. School Standards and Framework Act 1998 Governors are generally protected from personal liability where they act honestly and in good faith, but this protection does not remove their statutory responsibilities or the need to exercise reasonable care, skill, and diligence.⁹
United Kingdom, Equality Act 2010, c.15 (London: The Stationery Office, 2010).
For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers, UK Supreme Court, 2025.
Equality and Human Rights Commission, Equality Act 2010 Draft Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations (London: EHRC, 2026).
United Kingdom, The School Premises (England) Regulations 2012 (SI 2012/1943), Regulation 4.
Department for Education, Advice on Standards for School Premises (London: DfE).
United Kingdom, Education Act 2002, c.32, §175.
Department for Education, Keeping Children Safe in Education (current edition).
Woodland v Essex County Council [2013] UKSC 66.
United Kingdom, School Standards and Framework Act 1998, c.31, §50(7).
Nota bene
In a significant judgment delivered on 4 June 2026, the Scottish Court of Session held that West Lothian Council acted unlawfully by providing primary-school toilet facilities in which boys and girls shared communal toilet and wash-basin areas, even though individual cubicles were labelled male or female. Lady Poole ruled that the School Premises (General Requirements and Standards) (Scotland) Regulations 1967 require separate-sex sanitary accommodation, meaning the entire toilet space—including wash basins—not merely individual cubicles, and that the arrangements also amounted to indirect discrimination against girls under the Equality Act 2010 because they placed female pupils at a particular disadvantage in relation to privacy, dignity, hygiene, and safety.
The court rejected the Council’s reliance on government and EHRC guidance, stating plainly that “guidance is not law” and that public authorities must comply with statutory requirements as enacted. While the harassment claim failed, the court granted declarators that the toilet arrangements were unlawful, reinforcing the principle that the issue is fundamentally one of applying existing law rather than creating new legal obligations.¹ ² ³⁴
The significance of the judgment is simple: schools cannot assume that labelling individual cubicles satisfies legal requirements for single-sex provision if the wider facilities remain shared.”
¹ DE and FG v West Lothian Council [2026] CSOH 52, Opinion of Lady Poole, 4 June 2026, paras. 1, 25–34. ² Ibid., para. 21. “Guidance is not law. The Council is obliged to obey the law, not guidance if that deviates from the requirements of the law.” ³ Ibid., paras. 47–56. ⁴ Ibid., paras. 71–76.
Why Ask Questions?
Schools have different policies and physical arrangements. Many parents assume they know how facilities and safeguarding policies operate, but recent legal developments have prompted schools across the country to review existing practice. Asking respectful questions helps parents understand how their child’s school is implementing its legal and safeguarding responsibilities.
Questions Parents May Wish to Ask Their School
You may wish to ask:
Toilets and Changing Facilities Are toilets designated and used on a genuinely single-sex basis? Are changing rooms and sports changing facilities separated by sex in practice? Are any opposite-sex pupils permitted access to these facilities? What arrangements exist for pupils who require additional privacy? Has the governing body reviewed these arrangements following recent legal developments? Safeguarding and Parental Involvement Does the school have a policy on social transition? Under what circumstances would parents be informed if a child requested a different name or pronouns at school? What safeguarding assessment is undertaken before any social transition is supported? Is the governing body involved in oversight of these matters? Have these issues been considered within the school’s safeguarding framework and risk assessment processes?
Parents are encouraged to engage respectfully and constructively with their child’s school.
Template Email to Headteacher
Subject: Request for clarification regarding safeguarding and single-sex provision
Dear Headteacher,
I am the parent/carer of a pupil at your school.
I would be grateful if you could clarify the school’s current arrangements regarding toilets, changing facilities and safeguarding policies relating to sex and gender.
In particular, I would appreciate confirmation of: • whether toilets are provided and used on a genuinely single-sex basis; • whether changing facilities are provided and used on a genuinely single-sex basis; • what arrangements exist for pupils requiring additional privacy; • whether the governing body has reviewed these arrangements in light of recent legal and safeguarding developments.
I would also be grateful if you could direct me to any relevant policies.
Thank you for your assistance.
Yours sincerely,
[Name]
Template Email to Governors
Subject: Safeguarding oversight and single-sex provision
Dear Chair of Governors,
I am writing as a parent/carer with a safeguarding query.
I would be grateful to know whether the governing body has reviewed the school’s arrangements concerning: • single-sex toilets; • single-sex changing facilities; • social transition practices; • parental involvement in gender-related matters; • safeguarding risk assessment and oversight.
Given recent legal and safeguarding developments, including the Cass Review and subsequent guidance, I would appreciate confirmation that these matters have been considered by the governing body and that appropriate oversight arrangements are in place.
I am not seeking information about any individual pupil.
My concern is simply to understand the school’s safeguarding and governance arrangements.
Subsequent to our Open Letter to school governors across Brighton & Hove, issued on 18 May 2026, and the accompanying Governor Safeguarding Briefing, further authoritative guidance has now been published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
The release of the draft Equality Act 2010 Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations (2026) materially reinforces—and in key respects clarifies—the legal framework within which schools and governing bodies are required to operate.
For schools—and crucially, for school governors—the implications are immediate and practical. These are not abstract legal principles; they directly inform safeguarding obligations and governance accountability.
Legal Clarity: Sex Means Biological Sex
The draft Code states unequivocally:
“In the Equality Act 2010, references to a person’s sex are references to their biological sex.”¹
It further clarifies:
“A Gender Recognition Certificate does not change a person’s sex for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010.”²
For schools, this significantly clarifies a point that has, in practice, been treated as ambiguous. The Equality Act 2010 must now be understood, in operational terms, as grounded in biological sex when it comes to single-sex provision.
This has direct safeguarding implications. Schools are required to apply the law with clarity, not assumption.
Single-Sex Provision Is Lawful—and Protected
The draft Code confirms:
“A service provider may provide a separate or single-sex service where this is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.”³
It identifies legitimate aims including:
“privacy, decency, preventing trauma, ensuring health and safety, or enabling effective participation.”⁴
Safeguarding and Equality Act compliance are therefore mutually reinforcing, not in conflict.
For schools, this applies most clearly to:
toilets
changing rooms
showers
residential settings
any context involving undressing or vulnerability
What “Single-Sex” Means in Law
The Code provides a decisive clarification:
“A women-only service is a service for biological women.”⁵
“If a service is provided for women and trans women, it is not a women-only service.”⁶
Likewise:
“A men-only service is a service for biological men.”⁷
A service that includes members of the opposite sex may not meet the legal definition of single-sex provision, and cannot simply be treated as such.
For schools, the implication is direct:
Policies permitting opposite-sex access to single-sex facilities require careful legal justification and cannot be assumed to comply.
Safeguarding Cannot Be Subordinated to Policy Preference
The Code emphasises that providers must consider:
“privacy, dignity, safety and fairness for service users.”⁸
It further notes:
“separate services may be necessary to avoid disadvantage or distress.”⁹
For schools, this reinforces a fundamental principle:
Safeguarding is not secondary—it is determinative.
Where policies undermine privacy, create distress, or expose pupils to risk, they are unlikely to withstand scrutiny under either safeguarding standards or equality law.
Gender Reassignment: Protected, But Not Overriding
The Code confirms:
“Gender reassignment is a protected characteristic.”¹⁰
But clarifies:
“A person with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment can lawfully be excluded from a single-sex service if the exclusion is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.”¹¹
The law therefore requires proportionate, reasoned decision-making, not automatic policy positions.
Decisions Must Be Defensible
The Code stresses:
“Service providers should consider carefully whether the provision of separate or single-sex services is justified and proportionate.”¹²
This establishes a clear expectation:
decisions must be reasoned
decisions must be recorded
decisions must withstand scrutiny
Governing bodies must be able to demonstrate—not assume—that their policies are lawful, proportionate, and safeguarding-compliant.
What This Means for School Governors
Under Section 175 of the Education Act 2002, safeguarding is a non-delegable duty.
In light of the draft Code, governors must now ensure that:
Policies are legally grounded
Do policies reflect the legal meaning of sex?
Are single-sex provisions operating lawfully in practice?
Safeguarding risks are identified and recorded
Have risks relating to privacy, dignity, and safety been formally assessed?
Are they documented and subject to review?
Decisions are proportionate and evidenced
Is there a clear, recorded rationale for any departure from standard provision?
Can that rationale withstand inspection or legal scrutiny?
Oversight is active
Has the governing body formally considered these issues?
Is there a clear audit trail of discussion and decision-making?
The End of Informal Practice
A central implication of the draft Code is this:
Informal, assumption-based, or undocumented practice is no longer sufficient.
Policies based on:
self-identification alone
unwritten discretion
or unexamined local guidance
are unlikely to be defensible unless supported by:
safeguarding evidence
legal reasoning
and recorded decision-making
From Ambiguity to Accountability
For several years, schools operated in a climate of perceived uncertainty.
The new EHRC draft Code narrows that space considerably.
The direction is now clear:
sex is defined in law
single-sex provision is legitimate and protected
safeguarding considerations are central
decisions must be justified and recorded
Final Analysis
For school governors, the central question is no longer:
What does our policy say?
But:
Is this lawful, is it safe, and can we demonstrate that we have properly discharged our duties?
Where legal clarity exists and risks are foreseeable, inaction is no longer a matter of uncertainty.
It becomes a question of whether those responsible have properly discharged their duty.
Paragraph references relate to the draft Code as published in May 2026 and may be subject to revision prior to final statutory approval.
UPDATE
In a significant judgment delivered on 4 June 2026, the Scottish Court of Session held that West Lothian Council acted unlawfully by providing primary-school toilet facilities in which boys and girls shared communal toilet and wash-basin areas, even though individual cubicles were labelled male or female. Lady Poole ruled that the School Premises (General Requirements and Standards) (Scotland) Regulations 1967 require separate-sex sanitary accommodation, meaning the entire toilet space—including wash basins—not merely individual cubicles, and that the arrangements also amounted to indirect discrimination against girls under the Equality Act 2010 because they placed female pupils at a particular disadvantage in relation to privacy, dignity, hygiene, and safety.
The court rejected the Council’s reliance on government and EHRC guidance, stating plainly that “guidance is not law” and that public authorities must comply with statutory requirements as enacted. While the harassment claim failed, the court granted declarators that the toilet arrangements were unlawful, reinforcing the principle that the issue is fundamentally one of applying existing law rather than creating new legal obligations.¹ ² ³⁴
The significance of the judgment is simple: schools cannot assume that labelling individual cubicles satisfies legal requirements for single-sex provision if the wider facilities remain shared.
¹ DE and FG v West Lothian Council [2026] CSOH 52, Opinion of Lady Poole, 4 June 2026, paras. 1, 25–34. ² Ibid., para. 21. “Guidance is not law. The Council is obliged to obey the law, not guidance if that deviates from the requirements of the law.” ³ Ibid., paras. 47–56. ⁴ Ibid., paras. 71–76.
With revised statutory guidance on Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE), issued in July 2025 and due to come into force in September 2026, schools are now entering a critical transitional phase of policy alignment. A serious question must therefore be asked: are some of the very policy templates relied upon by schools placing them at risk of future non-compliance with the law?
This question has moved from abstraction to reality following concerns raised about model RSHE policies circulated by The Key, a provider whose materials are widely used across English schools and trusts. Where such organisations position themselves as authoritative sources of compliant policy, the implications of their wording extend far beyond individual institutions.
This is not a theoretical concern. It arises from the growing use of model RSHE policies produced by external providers and adopted—often with minimal amendment—by governing bodies across the country. The issue is not whether such providers intend to mislead, but whether the language embedded within their templates can be reconciled with the statutory framework schools are required to follow. This is therefore not a post-compliance critique, but a pre-implementation warning: the language schools adopt now will determine whether they are compliant when the guidance takes effect.
The stakes are higher than many realise. This is not merely a matter of educational philosophy. It is a question of legal compliance, safeguarding responsibility, and governance accountability.
Statutory Guidance Is Not Optional The starting point must be the legal status of the RSHE guidance itself. The Department for Education is explicit: this is statutory guidance issued under the Education Acts, and schools “must have regard to the guidance,” meaning that any departure requires clear, reasoned, and defensible justification.¹ This establishes not merely a recommendation, but a binding interpretive framework within which policy must be formed.
The responsibility for ensuring this compliance does not lie with external providers, however influential, but with those charged with governance. The guidance is addressed directly to governing bodies, trustees, proprietors, and senior leadership teams, who bear ultimate responsibility for policy adoption and implementation.²
This responsibility is reinforced by a further statutory expectation: schools must maintain an up-to-date RSHE policy and proactively engage and consult parents, ensuring transparency and accessibility of materials.³
The Critical Distinction: Law Versus Contested Belief The revised guidance is notably careful—indeed deliberate—in its handling of sensitive and contested subject matter. Pupils must be taught about protected characteristics, including sexual orientation and gender reassignment, in a way that fosters respect and dignity.⁴ At the same time, schools are required to teach the facts and the law, including the distinction between biological sex and gender reassignment.⁵
Crucially, the guidance introduces a limiting principle: schools must recognise that beyond the law there is “significant debate” and must not present any particular view as settled fact.⁶ This is made explicit in the directive that schools should not teach as fact that all people have a gender identity.⁷
This is reinforced elsewhere in the guidance, which emphasises that RSHE must equip pupils with knowledge of the law and that teaching must remain grounded in factual, evidence-based content rather than ideological assertion.⁸
Where Template Policy Language Becomes Legally Vulnerable It is precisely at this point that difficulties arise with certain externally supplied policy templates, including those attributed to The Key.
A commonly circulated formulation states:
“The curriculum is designed to focus on pupils of all gender identities and expressions…”⁹
The intention behind such language may well be inclusion. Yet intention is not the relevant legal test. The question is how such wording may reasonably be interpreted in light of statutory guidance.
On its face, the phrase assumes the existence of “gender identities and expressions” as a general and organising feature of human reality. It does not frame this as a contested idea, nor as one perspective among others. It presents it descriptively, as though it were a settled anthropological given.
In doing so, the wording is capable of being read as treating gender identity as an established and universal fact rather than a contested concept. That is precisely the formulation the statutory guidance cautions schools to avoid.
The Equality Act Distinction That Cannot Be Ignored The legal framework reinforces this concern. The Equality Act 2010 protects the characteristic of gender reassignment, a defined legal category relating to individuals undergoing or proposing to undergo a process of transition.¹⁰
The statutory guidance reflects this distinction with precision, referring consistently to biological sex and gender reassignment as the relevant legal categories.⁵ Where policy language substitutes these with broader and undefined notions of “gender identity,” it risks blurring the line between law and ideology.
For a school, this is not an abstract concern. It goes directly to the requirement that pupils be taught the law as it stands, not as it is reinterpreted through contested theoretical frameworks.
Governance Cannot Be Outsourced The statutory guidance is clear that governing bodies and proprietors are responsible for ensuring compliance, and that any departure from guidance must be justified.¹² The use of external templates—even those widely adopted—does not transfer that responsibility.
Schools must be able to demonstrate that their policies align with statutory expectations, particularly in light of strengthened requirements for parental engagement and transparency.³
Safeguarding Requires Clarity, Not Assumption The issue is not solely legal. It is also deeply pastoral.
Keeping Children Safe in Education 2025 defines safeguarding as protecting children from harm and preventing impairment of their mental and physical development.¹¹ It emphasises that safeguarding is a child-centred responsibility requiring careful, informed, and proportionate responses to complex needs.¹¹
The RSHE guidance similarly warns against simplistic approaches, noting that issues such as identity and distress must be handled with care and that teaching must remain evidence-based and developmentally appropriate.⁷
Where policy language implicitly affirms contested frameworks as universal, it risks shaping pastoral responses in ways that are insufficiently cautious. Safeguarding demands clarity, not assumption.
From Assumption to Accountability What is emerging, therefore, is not a marginal technical inconsistency but a systemic risk.
A single phrase, embedded now, may move a school from anticipated compliance into immediate contestation the moment the guidance comes into force.
The responsibility now rests with governors, trustees, and school leaders to ensure that policy reflects law, evidence, and the best interests of the child.
A school that cannot distinguish between law and ideology cannot claim neutrality; and a policy that cannot withstand scrutiny cannot credibly claim compliance.
¹ Department for Education, Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education (Statutory Guidance, July 2025), para. 5 (“must have regard”). ² Ibid., para. 9 (audience: governing bodies, trustees, SLT). ³ Ibid., paras. 12–13 (policy requirement and parental consultation). ⁴ Ibid., paras. 67–68 (“Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender content” section, p.36 of guidance). ⁵ Ibid., para. 69 (teaching the facts and law relating to biological sex and gender reassignment, p.36). ⁶ Ibid., para. 70 (recognition of “significant debate” beyond the law, p.36). ⁷ Ibid., para. 70 (instruction not to teach as fact that all people have a gender identity; caution regarding social transition, p.36). ⁸ Ibid., section “Teaching about the law.” ⁹ Model RSHE policy wording circulated by school governance providers, including The Key (2026 template; wording as reproduced in circulated policy extract). ¹⁰ Equality Act 2010, s.7 (protected characteristic: gender reassignment). ¹¹ Department for Education, Keeping Children Safe in Education 2025, Part One (definition of safeguarding including prevention of impairment of development). ¹² Department for Education, Relationships Education… (2025), para. 5 (duty to justify departure from statutory guidance).
These documents have been circulated via Clerks to Governing Bodies, with a clear purpose: to support governors in discharging their statutory safeguarding duties in a legal and regulatory landscape that has materially changed over the past year.
Why This Matters Now
Safeguarding is not static. It evolves with:
new evidence
updated statutory guidance
and developments in case law
Over the past 18 months, several developments have clarified expectations placed on schools and governing bodies, including the Cass Review, recent UK case law such as For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers, and updated Department for Education guidance in Keeping Children Safe in Education.
Taken together, these developments do not introduce new duties—but they sharpen and clarify existing ones.
The key point is simple:
Governing bodies must ensure safeguarding arrangements are not only in place, but effective in practice.
The Focus of the Open Letter
The Open Letter is not a policy document. It is a governance document.
It sets out, in clear terms:
the non-delegable nature of safeguarding responsibility
the requirement to identify, record, and actively manage risk
the importance of board-level oversight and scrutiny
the potential consequences where known risks are not acted upon
It also addresses a growing area of concern raised by local families: whether current practices relating to sex, facilities, and pupil support are fully aligned with safeguarding duties and the law.
The letter asks governing bodies to do something straightforward but essential:
Review, record, and verify.
The Governor Briefing: Practical Guidance
Alongside the letter, PSHE Brighton has issued a concise briefing designed for immediate use by governors.
The briefing covers:
1. What the Law Says About Sex
Clarifying that, under the Equality Act 2010, sex remains the basis for lawful single-sex provision, and that this has direct implications for safeguarding, privacy, and fairness.
2. Facilities and Safeguarding
Setting out the legal requirements for:
toilets
changing rooms
privacy arrangements
and the need for these to operate in practice, not just on paper.
3. Responding to Gender Distress
Providing clear guidance that:
safeguarding must come first
parents should normally be involved
decisions must be recorded and evidence-based
4. Social Transition as a Safeguarding Issue
Reflecting the conclusion of the Cass Review that:
social transition is not a neutral act
and may carry developmental and safeguarding implications.
5. Governance Checks
Offering a practical checklist for governing bodies to review:
whether risks have been formally identified
whether they are recorded and monitored
whether policies are legally sound
whether oversight is active and documented
A Governance Issue — Not an Ideological One
Both documents are deliberately framed in neutral, governance-focused language.
This is not about political or ideological positions.
It is about whether governing bodies are:
complying with statutory duties
applying the law correctly
and ensuring that safeguarding arrangements are robust, lawful, and effective
Accountability and Assurance
One of the central themes of both documents is accountability.
Where risks are:
known
foreseeable
and raised
but are not:
formally recorded
reviewed at board level
or acted upon
questions may arise as to whether governors have exercised the reasonable care, skill, and diligence required of them.
The Open Letter is therefore a prompt—not a criticism:
to ensure that governance keeps pace with legal clarity.
Our Aim
PSHE Brighton’s aim is simple:
to support schools in maintaining lawful and effective safeguarding practice
to ensure that every child is protected with dignity and fairness
and to assist governors in fulfilling their role with clarity and confidence
Next Steps for Governing Bodies
We encourage all governing bodies to:
review the Open Letter in full
consider the accompanying briefing
ensure safeguarding risks in this area are formally addressed
record and document board-level discussion and decisions
Final Word
Safeguarding depends not only on good intentions, but on clear governance, lawful practice, and proper oversight.
Respect for every child is essential.
But where safeguarding, privacy, and fairness are engaged, the law requires that these matters are approached with clarity, care, and accountability.
BHCC Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit Version 5 (January 2025)
Brighton and Hove City Council have published their final and complete revised Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit Version 5 (confusingly still titled 2024 in BHCC papers).
The Toolkit and an accompanying briefing paper, authored by Deb Austin, Corporate Director – Families, Children, and Wellbeing and Cabinet Member for these matters Emma Daniel, will be debated and voted on at the Full Council taking place on Thursday 30th January 2025.
You can find a link to the Austin Report here The Cabinet Member, Emma Daniel, is politically responsible for the Toolkit and this paper. The Corporate Director, Deb Austin, is the Officer responsible for stewardship of this policy.
In summary, the revised Toolkit contains some mealy-mouthed words about the need to avoid indirect discrimination of other groups, particularly people of faith and religion. It uses these words as an attempt to circumvent the Monaghan Advice published in 2024 (Advice of Karon Monaghan KC.pdf). Monaghan found the Toolkit Version 4 to be emphatically unlawful. Despite the adapted phraseology and caveats in the new Version 5, the revised Toolkit then blows open every risk related to safeguarding of children. It continues to fail to provide equal and fair treatment and protections of children based on both the protected characteristics of sex and, where applicable, gender reassignment, access to single sex spaces and services and it suggests that there’s no evidence mixed sex toilets are a risk to any girls. The revised Toolkit pays little, if any, attention to the matters set out in the Monaghan Advice.
The revised Toolkit is not compliant with The Cass Report (Final Report – Cass Review) which distinguishes between social transition (e.g. change of name and pronoun) pre and post onset of adolescence. This is completely missing from the revised Toolkit Version 5, a significant error. But the new Toolkit cite The Cass Report where it suits and it selectively quotes from The Cass Report, out of context and to offer a veneer of adherence to the Cass Report whilst in fact it pays little regard to it.
Throughout the new Toolkit Version 5, there is deliberate confusion and inappropriate interchangeable use of two concepts – the legally defined term of gender reassignment and ‘trans’, which the Toolkit defines as a much broader umbrella term but in various sections treats ‘trans’ as if it were the same as the legally protected characteristic of gender reassignment. The use of the term ‘trans children’ throughout is fundamentally flawed and fails to recognise that gender identity can be a continually evolving process amongst children and young people, a fact that is recognised in parts of the Toolkit, but which the rest of the Toolkit acts in contravention of.
One could contest that the section on PE and sports appears to be the most amended from the earlier draft versions of the Toolkit, but even this section of the final document effectively directs schools to act unfairly, unsafely, and unlawfully.
The new Toolkit is completely silent on how it expects schools to accommodate all children, including those with gender critical beliefs, which are also protected in law, and those staff in schools who are also legally entitled to hold gender critical beliefs.
The new Toolkit misunderstands the legalities around Gillick Competence, which is medical and not educational and is also determined in relation to point of time and specific issue. A child could be deemed Gillick Competent for one choice e.g. accessing contraception but not another e.g. accessing medical intervention such as cross sex hormones for gender distress. Schools and school staff are not competent to determine Gillick Competence for any child.
It is unclear that the new Toolkit has paid any due regard to prevent the classroom to clinic pipeline that has developed across the city. This most recently highlighted in a High Court case launched against the NHS (NHS faces High Court legal fight over cross-sex hormones prescribed to boy) which references the failure of school leaders, in a Brighton school to keep their child safe. This case is one of several cases that the public sector agencies in Brighton and Hove have been made aware of. They all begin with a child being socially transitioned in school by teachers and ending up in receipt of medical intervention by a local GP or the online service Gender GP.
It is unclear the role that Allsorts Youth Project will continue to have in schools, given they have had a free pass to provide “education” on gender identity and trans inclusion for many years, authored the previous and unlawful versions of the council’s Toolkit and are repeatedly cited by families as encouraging children to socially transition and facilitating those children to discover clinical prescribing services. Allsorts Youth Project have historically been a named referral partner of Gender GP. Gender GP are one private provider of puberty blockers. The Government has recently banned this prescribing indefinitely however no such ban currently exists on the private prescribing of cross sex hormones (Ban on puberty blockers to be made indefinite on experts’ advice – GOV.UK).
There are concerns that the new Toolkit enables the framing of vulnerable children as ‘trans’ and therefore encouraging the determination of ‘exceptional cases’ requiring transition and being placed on a classroom to clinic pathway.
The new Toolkit states that it is not mandating schools to follow the policy and that it is up to schools to follow the law. It effectively is telling schools to follow the council’s recommended unlawful and dangerous practice whilst inoculating the council from being legally challenged directly. It’s a careful legal document that doesn’t really help in practice and appears to have been created to keep Brighton and Hove City Council out of court but allow activist teachers to carry on doing whatever they want. It places all legal liabilities squarely with individual schools and governing bodies and placing them individually at significant risk of Judicial Review.
Specifically in relation to the report authored by Deb Austin, Corporate Director – Families, Children, and Wellbeing, it is imperative that the council publish in the public domain, the following:
The KC advice they claim to have received. Para 7.1 in the Austin Report says that the new Toolkit has been “sanctioned” by a KC, this is waiver of legal privilege. Given the contentious legal nature of the Toolkit, the council must publish the KC advice they have received.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission response referred to, which the Austin Report says is available.
Equality Impact Assessment undertaken by Brighton and Hove City Council prior to publishing the new Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit, version 5, publicly available January 2025.
Brighton and Hove City Council have published a revised Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit and consultation. The deadline for the consultation responses is Friday 11th October 2024.
It is vital that there are as many responses submitted to the consultation as possible.
To assist families and friends of PSHEbrighton to respond, we have produced a model consultation response, which you can download here.
The model response incorporates and cross references with the Cass Report, the Monaghan KC Advice, current case law and other available evidence.
We encourage you to create your own response to the consultation survey but we hope that our model response will help you to craft a consultation survey response that is authentic to you and well-resourced with the available evidence.
PSHE Brighton has written to all school governors in Brighton and Hove asking them to follow Government Guidance for Gender Questioning Children which is due for publication imminently, the Cass Report which was published in April 2024 Final Report – Cass Review and statutory safeguarding guidance, Keeping Children Safe in Education 2024 which was published on 2nd September 2024 Keeping children safe in education 2024 (publishing.service.gov.uk) and not to rely on the Brighton Council Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit which is now superfluous to policy requirements.
In the opening session of the LGB Alliance 2023 Conference, Eileen Gallagher OBE delves into the pressing issue of trans ideology in schools. Joined by educators Steve Mastin (History teacher and co-founder, Opening Worlds) and Harry Cooper (former teacher), the trio engages in a thought-provoking discussion that sheds light on the challenges faced by students in educational settings.
Protecting young people: A Dystopian Story: Eileen Gallagher OBE meets with a founder of PSHEbrighton to explore the impact of activist teachers in relation to safeguarding and how parents, school leaders and the staffroom can respond to prevent the medicalisation of gender-confused children.
