Letter to Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills
The Herald article Schools could face Sandie Peggie-style legal dispute highlighted our comments that local authorities that fail to uphold the School Premises Regulations on separate sex facilities for school pupils may also fall foul of their Equality Act non-harassment obligations. We have now sent the following letter to Cabinet Secretary Jenny Gilruth.
View letter as a PDF
We received the following reply from Ms Gilruth on 07 February in which she contests that the Government’s trans guidance for schools is compliant with the Equality Act.
View letter as a PDF
We responded on 11 March with the following, sending copies to the First Minister, EHRC and the SHRC:
View letter as a PDF
Update: 28 March 2025
Two replies so far, one from the EHRC who said “We will get back to you in due course” and another from SHRC who seem to have missed that our covering email asked for their intervention in human rights abuses as detailed in our letter to the Cabinet Secretary, and instead thanked us for keeping them informed of our current activities.
The link in SHRC’s letter is to their Women’s Rights – Position Statement in which we note they “need access to data and evidence” in order to monitor how the decisions of public authorities impact on people’s human rights. Seemingly they also missed the list of 53 schools and a further 17 schools under construction that have mixed-sex toilets, all verified by Freedom of Information responses or published planning documents.
Update: 08 April 2025
We received the following interim reply on behalf of Ms Gilruth.
