More than one hundred Brighton & Hove residents asked the Council’s Chief Executive whether repeated safeguarding concerns had received proper scrutiny. Her reply explained the limited remit of the NHS investigation, but did not answer the six questions about the Council’s own safeguarding governance, educational guidance, curriculum resources and treatment of parental concerns.
On 1 July 2026, more than one hundred Brighton & Hove residents wrote to Jess Gibbons, Chief Executive of Brighton & Hove City Council, following publication of the NHS investigation into WellBN’s treatment of children and young people experiencing gender-related distress.
The signatories included parents, carers, professionals and members of the wider community. Their letter did not allege that Brighton & Hove City Council had been investigated by the NHS. It did not ask Council officers to account for clinical decisions made by WellBN practitioners.
Its purpose was stated plainly:
“The purpose of this letter is not to revisit the clinical findings themselves. Rather, it is to ask what lessons Brighton & Hove City Council intends to draw from them.”
For several years, parents and residents had raised concerns about safeguarding, parental involvement, social transition in schools, external organisations working with children and the pathways through which vulnerable young people might progress towards medical intervention.
Those concerns had been raised through correspondence, complaints, deputations, public questions, legal communications and media reporting. Many pre-dated both the Cass Review and the WellBN investigation.
The letter therefore made an important distinction. The significance of the WellBN findings was not confined to events inside one GP practice. Their publication also changed the context in which earlier warnings to local public authorities must now be considered.
As the residents wrote:
“The question raised by the WellBN findings is no longer whether concerns existed. The question is how institutions responded when those concerns were raised.”
Six questions for the Council
The letter asked what lessons Brighton & Hove City Council believed should be learned from WellBN and whether concerns raised by parents and residents over previous years had received appropriate scrutiny.
It asked whether the Council would review its handling of concerns about social transition in schools, parental involvement, safeguarding practice and gender-related guidance affecting children and young people.
It also asked whether council-supported guidance, external providers and other organisations working with schools would be examined; how professional curiosity and open safeguarding scrutiny would be encouraged; and how parents could be confident that their concerns would be considered fairly, respectfully and without prejudice.¹
These were questions about the Council’s own responsibilities. They were not requests for the Council to repeat the NHS investigation, adjudicate upon WellBN’s clinical decisions or accept every parental account without examination.
The Chief Executive’s reply
Jess Gibbons replied on 6 July.
The Chief Executive acknowledged that the WellBN investigation had identified concerns involving prescribing practices, clinical oversight, record-keeping, consent and governance. She then emphasised that its remit had been confined to WellBN and that neither its terms of reference nor its findings had examined Brighton & Hove City Council services.
She wrote:
“The investigation does not establish any connection between the matters identified and Council-run services.”
Her response concluded that responsibility for acting upon the report rested with NHS Sussex and the relevant healthcare providers. Questions concerning the investigation’s evidence, methodology, clinical decision-making and recommendations should therefore be directed to the Integrated Care Board.²
That explanation accurately describes the formal remit of the NHS investigation.
It does not answer the residents’ questions.
The letter did not ask whether the NHS had made findings against the Council. It asked whether serious failures within a local gender-care service should prompt the Council to examine its own safeguarding culture, educational policies, external partnerships and previous response to parental warnings.
An institution does not have to be condemned in somebody else’s report before asking whether there are lessons for its own work.
The Council was not a distant observer
Brighton & Hove City Council was not clinically responsible for prescriptions issued by WellBN. That has never been suggested.
The Council nevertheless exercises substantial education and safeguarding functions affecting many of the same children and families. Section 175 of the Education Act 2002 requires a local authority to ensure that its education functions are exercised with a view to safeguarding and promoting children’s welfare. The local authority is also one of the three statutory safeguarding partners required to work with the Integrated Care Board and the chief officer of police to safeguard children across the area.³
Direct responsibility for compliance within individual schools rests with governing bodies, academy trusts and school leaders. Brighton & Hove City Council cannot simply direct every academy as though all schools were Council departments.
It is, however, accountable for its own education functions, maintained-school responsibilities, safeguarding arrangements and the guidance, training and curriculum resources it produces, hosts, endorses or recommends.
The Council has not remained neutral on the disputed questions surrounding gender-questioning children. In January 2025, its Cabinet approved Version 5 of the Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit and recommended that all education settings in Brighton and Hove use it to inform policy and practice.⁴
The toolkit promotes a “whole setting approach” and addresses curriculum content, staff and governor training, social transition, names and pronouns, school records, confidentiality, toilets, changing rooms, sport, residential accommodation and referrals to external organisations.
It recommends that awareness of people who identify as transgender or are exploring their gender should be taught throughout the curriculum. It suggests using assemblies, lesson plans, pupil campaigns, LGBT History Month and International Trans Day of Visibility, and advises schools where possible to adopt requested names and pronouns.⁵
The question is therefore not whether the Council prescribed medication. It did not.
The question is whether assumptions promoted through local educational policy, safeguarding advice, curriculum design and external partnerships were sufficiently cautious, evidence-based and open to challenge.
That is precisely what the residents’ letter asked.
The Council’s own toolkit requires a review
The toolkit itself recognises that the legal and evidential landscape may change. It states that new research, case law and practice should inform continuing review, and that the document remains subject to future revision.
It also acknowledges that it does not supersede statute or statutory guidance.⁶
Those qualifications make a review unavoidable.
Since Version 5 was approved, the statutory framework has changed materially. Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 and revised statutory RSHE guidance will apply from 1 September. The Supreme Court has authoritatively clarified the meaning of sex in the Equality Act 2010. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has drafted revised guidance for schools and completed the parliamentary scrutiny stage for its updated Code governing services and public functions.
The Council cannot reasonably state that its toolkit must remain responsive to new evidence and law while declining to say whether it is now being reviewed.
The current Council curriculum must also be examined
The Council’s own PSHE, including RSHE Curriculum Map for Brighton & Hove Primary Schools 2026 confirms that Brighton & Hove continues to exercise a substantive role in shaping local provision.
The map presents itself as based on Department for Education statutory guidance and the PSHE Association Programme of Study. It provides for approximately one PSHE lesson each week, directs schools to Brighton & Hove PSHE Team resources hosted on the BEEM platform and explains that topics have been sequenced around equality-calendar events including LGBT History Month.⁷
The programme begins in Reception, where it includes “Gender Equality Education” focused on clothing stereotypes and “Family Diversity”. In Year 1, children are introduced to the idea that there are “many ways to be a boy or a girl”. Similar wording appears in Years 3 and 5. Year 6 includes “LGBT+ equality education” and teaching about different forms of adult relationships, while its protective-behaviours material links respect for another person’s “identity” with feeling safe.⁸
Teaching children that boys and girls need not conform to narrow stereotypes is a legitimate educational purpose. A boy does not become less male because he dislikes football, and a girl does not become less female because she prefers engineering to ballet.
The concern arises where sound teaching against stereotypes becomes a route into a different proposition: that interests, personality, clothing or discomfort may disclose an internal identity capable of superseding biological sex.
The curriculum map does not reveal whether that conceptual shift occurs. It lists topics and intended outcomes, but not the detailed lesson plans, teacher scripts, slides, worksheets, films, books, classroom discussions, linked websites or external organisations through which those outcomes are delivered.
A curriculum map is not the curriculum.
A revised policy is not a curriculum audit
Recent examination of proposed arrangements at a local primary school illustrated the distinction.
The school informed parents that it intended to adopt Brighton & Hove lesson plans and resources as its whole-school PSHE programme. Its draft policy, however, contained only broad descriptions. Without access to the actual slides, worksheets, books, videos, links and teacher guidance, neither parents nor governors could determine precisely what children would encounter.
An older Brighton & Hove Year 6 lesson pack was also examined. It has not been confirmed that this pack will be used from September 2026 and should not be represented as though its current use were established.
It nevertheless illustrates the kind of material previously produced through local-authority educational structures. The pack treated “gender identity” as a teaching theme, used expressions including “all genders” and “cisgender”, and stated that some people do not feel like boys or girls. It also contained or recommended material concerning masturbation, sexual pleasure, pornography, contraception, same-sex relationships and explicitly LGBT-inclusive resources.⁹
The material may have been replaced, revised or retained only in part. That uncertainty is not a reason to dismiss the issue. It is the reason an audit is required.
Legacy resources can remain in shared drives, curriculum platforms, staff folders, saved presentations and classroom libraries after a headline policy has been amended. Changing the date on a policy does not establish that the lesson delivered to children has changed.
An adequate audit must therefore include lesson plans, teacher scripts, slides, worksheets, diagrams, films, books, reading lists, themed displays, assemblies, visiting speakers, online resources and external providers.
A picture book may communicate a contested theory just as effectively as a formal policy. Once a book is selected for class teaching, placed on an official reading list or accompanied by teacher-directed discussion intended to establish a particular conclusion, it has become part of the school’s educational provision.
KCSIE 2026 changes the safeguarding standard
The residents’ letter was prompted by WellBN and the Council’s treatment of earlier concerns. It was not principally a letter about new Department for Education guidance.
The publication of Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 nevertheless makes the need for a Council review more urgent.
KCSIE 2026 is statutory guidance and comes into force on 1 September. Schools and colleges must continue to use the 2025 edition until 31 August.¹⁰
Under the new guidance, schools should not initiate action concerning social transition. Individual members of staff should not adopt related changes unless a school-level decision has been made and the child’s parents or carers have been involved. Decision-making must be documented and records retained.
Parents and carers are recognised as having the leading role in their children’s lives. Schools are directed to engage them as a matter of priority, and their views should carry great weight.
Most significantly for established local practice, schools are expected to consider whether decisions made before the guidance came into force remain appropriate. Relevant staff must know a child’s biological sex, and schools are required to record it accurately wherever it is recorded.¹¹
This cannot be implemented merely by altering one paragraph in a safeguarding policy.
Schools must examine previous social-transition arrangements, names and pronouns, record-keeping, confidentiality, parental communication, staff training, single-sex facilities and the local guidance upon which earlier decisions were based.
As the local authority that produced and recommended the toolkit, Brighton & Hove City Council should explain what it is doing to ensure that its guidance and resources meet the revised standard before September.
The revised RSHE guidance requires scrutiny of the materials
Revised statutory guidance for Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education also takes effect on 1 September 2026.
The guidance requires schools to distinguish facts and law concerning biological sex and gender reassignment from contested beliefs. It states that schools should not teach as fact that everyone possesses a gender identity.
Schools are also told to avoid external materials which oversimplify the subject, perpetuate stereotypes or encourage pupils to question their gender. Parents should be consulted about external resources in advance and all such materials should be made available on request.
More generally, schools should show parents a representative sample of the resources they intend to use and ensure that parents can view all RSHE curriculum materials upon request.¹²
Those provisions are directly relevant to Brighton & Hove’s curriculum history.
A programme does not establish compliance merely by saying that it is based on Department for Education guidance or the PSHE Association Programme of Study. Such references do not prove that every locally produced slide, script, video, book or external link has been independently examined or approved.
The current Brighton & Hove programme must be tested resource by resource against the standard applying from September.
Equality law also requires reconsideration
The review cannot stop with KCSIE and RSHE.
In For Women Scotland Ltd v Scottish Ministers, the Supreme Court held unanimously that the words “man”, “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex. A Gender Recognition Certificate does not change a person’s sex for the purposes of that Act.
Protection against gender-reassignment discrimination remains. It is, however, a distinct protected characteristic and does not redefine sex.¹³
That distinction is directly relevant to educational guidance which may have treated gender identity as though it changed a pupil’s sex, or suggested that equality law required schools to do so.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission opened consultation on revised technical guidance for schools in England on 10 June 2026. The consultation remains open until 30 September. The document is draft technical guidance, not a statutory code, although the Commission states that it may be used as evidence in legal proceedings.¹⁴
The draft explains that the Public Sector Equality Duty applies to education authorities and schools, including maintained schools and academies. It describes a “duty of inquiry” under which decision-makers must establish an evidence base about the needs and experiences of pupils and parents with different protected characteristics.
It also states that equality implications must be considered before and during decision-making, that policies must be reviewed on a continuing basis and that the assessment must be serious and rigorous rather than a procedural formality. Responsibility cannot simply be delegated to an external provider.¹⁵
These principles go directly to the residents’ questions.
Did the Council obtain an adequate evidence base before promoting its approach? Were the experiences of parents, girls, disabled and neurodivergent children, religious families and people holding protected beliefs properly considered? Were competing rights examined, or was one conception of “inclusion” treated as the whole equality analysis?
The Council cannot answer those questions by observing that the NHS investigation had a different remit.
The EHRC’s updated draft Code of Practice for services, public functions and associations is also relevant to the Council’s wider functions. It completed its forty-day parliamentary scrutiny period on 9 July. The Minister must now take the necessary action to revoke the 2011 Code and bring the new Code into force as statutory guidance; until that occurs, its status should not be overstated.¹⁶
What cannot be postponed is the Supreme Court’s judgment. That is already authoritative law.
The pathway does not begin at the clinic door
The relationship between education and healthcare must be described carefully. A classroom lesson does not by itself cause a medical referral, and no individual child’s history should be reduced to a simple theory of institutional causation.
Public bodies cannot, however, introduce an identity framework in early education, facilitate social transition within that framework and then treat a later clinical presentation as though it arose in a vacuum.
The concepts may first be introduced through books or classroom resources. They may then be reinforced through names, pronouns, records, pastoral arrangements and referrals to external organisations. A clinician may eventually encounter a child whose distress has already been interpreted through the language of gender identity.
The WellBN findings do not prove that Brighton & Hove’s educational guidance caused any particular child to receive inappropriate treatment. That is not the claim.
Their relevance is that they demonstrate the risks created when professional confidence is not matched by adequate evidence, competence, governance and challenge. They also explain why safeguarding cannot be divided into sealed compartments marked “school”, “Council”, “external provider” and “NHS”.
Children and families experience the local system as a connected whole.
The Council’s responsibility is not to presume causation. It is to investigate whether the guidance, relationships, referrals and decisions within that system operated as safely as they should have done.
An invitation to listen
On 16 July, PSHEbrighton wrote again to the Chief Executive.
The second letter explained that several local families believe they experienced safeguarding failures involving autism and other vulnerabilities, social transition within schools, communication with parents, referrals to external organisations and eventual contact with NHS gender services.
It did not ask Jess Gibbons to accept those accounts uncritically. It invited her to hear them directly.
Several parents offered to meet privately and confidentially to explain what happened, what concerns they raised and why they believe important safeguarding lessons remain.
The letter stated:
“If, after hearing those accounts, you remain satisfied that the Council’s safeguarding arrangements require no further reflection, that would at least be a conclusion reached after listening to those most directly affected.”
The purpose is not publicity or confrontation. It is to ensure that the Council’s most senior officer has the opportunity to hear evidence which may not be fully represented in committee papers, institutional correspondence or formal investigations.¹⁷
Safeguarding begins with listening.
What the Council should do now
Brighton & Hove City Council should provide a substantive answer to the six questions contained in the residents’ original letter.
It should examine how relevant concerns raised since 2023 were recorded, assessed, escalated and presented to senior officers, elected members and scrutiny committees.
It should review the Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit against KCSIE 2026, the revised RSHE guidance, the Supreme Court’s judgment and the developing EHRC framework.
It should audit the current Brighton & Hove PSHE and RSHE programme, including the detailed resources underlying the 2026 curriculum map. That examination should include lesson plans, scripts, slides, worksheets, films, books, displays, websites, external organisations and training packages.
It should establish which legacy resources remain available to schools, which have been amended and which have been formally withdrawn.
It should explain how the Council is satisfying its Public Sector Equality Duty across all relevant protected characteristics rather than treating one preferred conception of inclusion as the whole equality analysis.
It should provide maintained schools with clear, version-controlled advice before 1 September and make equivalent information available to academies and other settings, while respecting the separate legal responsibilities of their trusts and governing bodies.
It should also accept the invitation to hear directly from affected parents.
None of this requires the Council to presume that every previous decision was wrong or that every teacher and officer acted improperly.
It requires the Council to recognise that the evidence, law and statutory framework have changed, and that responsible public authorities review their policies when the foundations upon which those policies rested have been called into question.
The question remains
The NHS investigation was not an investigation into Brighton & Hove City Council.
That has never been disputed.
The question is what Brighton & Hove City Council has learned from it.
The Chief Executive’s reply explained the boundary of the NHS investigation. It did not address the Council’s educational role, the guidance it promoted, the curriculum resources produced under local-authority auspices or the repeated experiences reported by parents.
Since that reply, the need for review has become still clearer. KCSIE 2026 requires schools to reconsider previous decisions. The revised RSHE guidance requires scrutiny of actual teaching materials. The Supreme Court has clarified the meaning of sex in equality law. The EHRC has emphasised evidence, inquiry and continuing review.
Brighton & Hove City Council should lead that process rather than deny its relevance.
Sources
1. Letter from more than one hundred Brighton & Hove residents to Jess Gibbons, Chief Executive of Brighton & Hove City Council, 1 July 2026, particularly the six questions concerning safeguarding, social transition, parental involvement, Council-supported guidance and professional curiosity.
2. Jess Gibbons, Chief Executive of Brighton & Hove City Council, reply to Lesley Hammond, 6 July 2026.
3. Education Act 2002, section 175; Department for Education, Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026, provisions concerning the local authority, Integrated Care Board and chief officer of police as statutory safeguarding partners.
4. Brighton & Hove City Council, Cabinet decision, 23 January 2025, approving Version 5 of the Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit and recommending its use by education settings in Brighton and Hove.
5. Brighton & Hove City Council, Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit, Version 5, sections concerning the whole-setting approach, curriculum, equality-calendar events, teaching resources, names and pronouns.
6. Ibid., sections 1.1.5 and 1.2, concerning continuing review and the relationship between the toolkit, statute and statutory guidance.
7. Brighton & Hove City Council, PSHE, including RSHE Curriculum Map for Brighton & Hove Primary Schools 2026, page 1.
8. Ibid., Reception to Year 6 curriculum tables, particularly pages 2, 3, 5, 7 and 9.
9. Notes on the Proposed PSHE and RSE Arrangements: St Andrew’s CE Primary School — Points to Consider as a Governor and as a Parent, July 2026; Brighton & Hove City Council, legacy KS2 Relationship and Sex Education: Lesson Plans — Year 6. The notes expressly state that use of the older pack from September 2026 has not been confirmed.
10. Department for Education, Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026, publication and commencement information. The guidance comes into force on 1 September 2026, while the 2025 edition remains operative until 31 August 2026.
11. Department for Education, Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026, paragraphs 258–280, concerning children questioning their gender, school-level decision-making, parental involvement, review of previous decisions and accurate recording of biological sex.
12. Department for Education, Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education: Statutory Guidance for Introduction on 1 September 2026, particularly paragraphs 55–72.
13. UK Supreme Court, For Women Scotland Ltd v Scottish Ministers, judgment and press summary, 16 April 2025.
14. Equality and Human Rights Commission, consultation on revised technical guidance for schools in England, opened 10 June 2026 and scheduled to close on 30 September 2026.
15. Equality and Human Rights Commission, draft technical guidance for schools in England, chapter concerning the Public Sector Equality Duty, the duty of inquiry, evidential assessment and continuing review.
16. Equality and Human Rights Commission, updated draft Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations, laid before Parliament on 21 May 2026; forty-day parliamentary scrutiny period completed on 9 July 2026.
17. PSHEbrighton, letter inviting the Chief Executive to meet confidentially with affected parents, 16 July 2026.