Hospital bosses at the centre of a legal row over allowing a transgender member of staff to use the female changing rooms feared they could be portrayed as a “bullying trust”, a nurse told an employment tribunal.
Seven nurses are taking action against County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust.
They are claiming sexual harassment, discrimination, victimisation and breaches of the right to a private life. They argue they have suffered anxiety, distress and feel unsafe at work.
The group says Rose Henderson, who was born male but identifies as a woman, was allowed to use the women’s changing facilities at Darlington Memorial Hospital.
They claim that Rose Henderson is married to a woman and that the couple hoped to conceive a child, implying that “he is a sexually active biological male”.
Giving evidence to the employment tribunal hearing in Newcastle, nurse Jane Shields, who is not one of the claimants, said she first worked with Rose Henderson in 2019.
“About eight months into his first year as a student, he became known as Rose. It was a quite rapid change in dynamics. People had questions and would ask Rose what made him decide to go down that route,” Ms Shields said.
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“No-one spoke to him or about him in a nasty way, but there were conversations with him about it. Rose was very open and transparent with us.”
The nurse anaesthetist, who now works in Middlesbrough, said it was a “very confusing situation” due to Rose Henderson being married to a woman.
“He told us he was not going down the full transition route (a sex change operation) and when he was asked why, he told us that he wanted to father a child with his wife,” Ms Shields told the tribunal hearing.
“He said he wanted to wait until his wife was pregnant. He also told us he did not consider himself to be a lesbian.”
‘80% of female staff unhappy’
Ms Shields said she “felt extremely uncomfortable” when Rose Henderson started to use the female changing rooms and claimed “80% of the female staff at the time were not happy” either.
She said she asked her manager why the women “were expected to share our changing room with a male”.
“Her answer was that we have to be shown to be ‘a diverse and accepting Trust’,” Ms Shields continued.
“I was aware that in the recent past we had a reputation of being a bullying environment for students and that students were refusing to come to Darlington as a result.”
She added that she believes her employer didn’t want to be “portrayed as a ‘bullying’ trust”.
In March 2024, 26 nurses signed a letter to the trust expressing concerns about transgender colleagues using the female changing rooms.
One of them was Kirsten Coutts, who has worked at Darlington Memorial Hospital since 2008. She said that while she did not know Rose Henderson or use the same changing room, she found the situation “unacceptable”.
“When we look after patients, we are not allowed to put transgender patients together with biological women at any point in their stay at the hospital,” she said in her statement.
“They are always placed in a side room. This is obviously a sensible rule and it is not reasonable or fair to deny the same right to privacy to the Trust’s own staff.”
Accusations of discrimination
Five months later, Ms Coutts was informed that Rose Henderson had lodged a grievance against the nurses who had signed the letter.
Rose Henderson said the nurses were guilty of “direct discrimination and harassment that has created an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and offensive environment, due to my protected characteristics”.
Ms Coutts said she was “quite surprised and taken aback” at the grievance lodged against her, as she “had never met RH (Rose Henderson) nor even knew what RH looked like”.
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She said the letter she signed was addressed to the director of workforce in her trust, not Rose Henderson.
“In response, I was officially accused of personally creating ‘an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and offensive environment’ for RH and threatened with disciplinary action,” she told the tribunal.
“I understood the Trust to be effectively saying that we had no right to an opinion on this issue.”
The tribunal continues
