Seven female nurses at Darlington Memorial Hospital have been awarded a total of £187,000 in compensation after an employment tribunal found that their NHS trust harassed and indirectly discriminated against them over access to changing facilities.
The nurses, who work in the hospital’s Day Surgery Unit, brought their claim against County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust after being required to share the women’s changing room with a transgender colleague.
The Newcastle Employment Tribunal ruled in January 2026 that the trust had subjected the nurses to harassment by allowing the colleague to use the female changing room without providing a suitable alternative.
It found that the trust’s handling of the women’s concerns had violated their dignity and created a “hostile, intimidating, humiliating and degrading environment”. The tribunal also upheld their claim of indirect sex discrimination.
The case centred on the trust’s Transition in the Workplace policy, which allowed transgender staff to use facilities corresponding to their affirmed gender. The policy said that employees who did not wish to share those facilities should use alternatives, but the tribunal found that suitable alternatives were not available.
The tribunal did not find that the transgender nurse had personally harassed or victimised the women. The findings instead concerned the trust’s policy and its response to the concerns raised by the nurses.
Following the ruling, the trust formally apologised to the nurses and said it had not adequately considered their concerns. It has since introduced updated guidance and made unisex facilities available across its hospital sites.
Chief executive Steve Russell said the trust had accepted and respected the tribunal’s findings, adding that its single-sex facilities would now be used according to biological sex while it continued to review its policies and workplace facilities.
