Nurses forced to share changing room with trans colleague ‘who wears boxers’ initiate legal action

The NHS is facing historic legal action as nurses protest over being forced to share a changing room with a transgender colleague.

The 26 women who complained say the nurse did not undergo reassignment surgery and appears to have a “great interest” in female staff.

One of the nurses said: “We don’t feel safe because we are only in our underwear and the individual is not alone in the closet.

“He walks around the room in his boxer shorts.”

Six of them are considering taking the case to an employment tribunal, in the first legal challenge of its kind.

The nurses say their trans colleague at County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust told them they had stopped taking hormone treatment while trying to get pregnant with a partner.

A nurse, who was sexually abused as a child, said she was “petrified and started hyperventilating” after an uncomfortable encounter.

She said: “He stood there, two meters from me. With tight, holey black boxer shorts and he asked for the third time if I was already changing.

Another nurse added that she “has been on the verge of tears” in the shared space.

In March, nurses wrote to trust bosses: “We do not consider it appropriate to have a sexually active biological male sharing our changing rooms.”

They did not receive a written response, but there was an impromptu meeting where the ward was told that “they need to come to an agreement.”

The hospital’s transgender nurse continued to have access to the women’s locker room.