Nurse Sandie Peggie wins harassment claim against NHS Fife

A nurse who objected to sharing a female changing room with a transgender doctor has won a claim for harassment in her employment tribunal case against NHS Fife, but other allegations of discrimination were dismissed.

Sandie Peggie was suspended by NHS Fife after complaining about having to share a changing room with Dr Beth Upton at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy on Christmas Eve 2023.

She was placed on special leave after Dr Beth Upton, a transgender medic, made an allegation of bullying and harassment, and cited concerns about patient care.

Ms Peggie had lodged a claim against NHS Fife and Dr Upton, citing the Equality Act 2010, including sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief, indirect discrimination, and victimisation.

The employment tribunal hearings took place in Dundee before Judge Sandy Kemp earlier this year.

On Monday in a written judgment, the harassment claim was upheld but allegations of discrimination, indirect discrimination and victimisation were dismissed.

Ms Peggie welcomed the decision and said the past two years had been “agonising”, while her solicitor praised her as “tenacious and courageous”.

The tribunal found that NHS Fife had harassed Mrs Peggie by failing to revoke the grant of permission to Dr Upton on an interim basis after Mrs Peggie complained, for the period until different work rotas took effect so that they would not work together and said that, as a result, Dr Upton was in the changing room when the claimant was present on two occasions.

It also found that the board had harassed Ms Peggie by taking an unreasonable length of time to investigate the allegation, and by making reference to patient care allegations against her on March 28 2024; and giving an instruction to her not to discuss the case, until a further message a little over two weeks later which confirmed that that applied only to the investigation.

The judgment dismissed the claim made against Dr Upton, who was named as a respondent in the case.

Ms Peggie said: “I am beyond relieved and delighted that the tribunal has found that my employer Fife Health Board harassed me after I complained about having to share a female-only changing room with a male colleague.

“The last two years have been agonising for me and my family. I will have much more to say in the coming days once I’ve been able to properly consider the lengthy judgment and discuss it with my legal team.

“For now, I am looking forward to spending a quiet few days with my family.

“I’m so grateful to my incredible legal team, Naomi Cunningham lead counsel; Dr Charlotte Elves, junior counsel; and my solicitor, Margaret Gribbon. There are many others I would like to thank and will do so in the coming days.”

Ms Gribbon added: “The tribunal’s finding that Fife Health Board harassed Sandie Peggie is a huge win for a tenacious and courageous woman standing up for her sex-based rights.

“This has been an extraordinarily lengthy and complex legal case. After hearing evidence for over a month from some 21 witnesses and considering just under 3,000 pages of productions, the tribunal has today delivered a 318-page judgment.

“Due to the length of the judgment and the fact the legal team only received it this morning at 10am, we will not be in a position to make substantive comments on it today and will do so later this week.”

A spokesperson for NHS Fife said: “NHS Fife recognises that this has been a complex and lengthy process and acknowledges the careful consideration of Judge Kemp and the tribunal panel.

“The employment tribunal unanimously dismissed all of the claimant’s allegations against Dr Upton and all of the allegations against the board, apart from four specific aspects of the harassment complaint.

“We will now take time to work through the detail of the judgment alongside our legal team to understand fully what it means for the organisation.

“We want to recognise how difficult this tribunal has been for everyone directly and indirectly involved.

“Our focus now is to ensure that NHS Fife remains a supportive and inclusive environment for all employees and our patients and to deliver health and care to the population of Fife.”

The tribunal judgment said it disagreed with the findings of an internal investigation, and that Ms Peggie had likely “harassed” Dr Upton during the changing room incident.

It said that Ms Peggie’s actions in the changing room indicated “she did not feel a sense of threat from the presence of a male”, but that her concerns “had been brushed off rather than adequately considered” by her employers.

The judgment said there was no evidence of a “conspiracy” against Ms Peggie, or that Dr Upton had deleted phone notes as alleged.

It also found there was no “group disadvantage” to female staff, as it calculated that around 6% of female workers shared Ms Peggie’s views, and that “on the contrary, several of them supported the second respondent doing so”.

However it said that the internal investigation “should have been conducted far more quickly”.

The judgment said that language used by Ms Peggie in the changing room “were entirely reasonably found intrusive and highly offensive (to Dr Upton). They went beyond a simple expression of belief and the concern the claimant felt”.

It added: “We appreciate that our conclusion that what the claimant did amounted to harassment and that is not the outcome of the first respondent’s disciplinary hearing which held that there had not been sufficient evidence to uphold the complaint made.”

However it also said that there was a “stark contrast to the materially higher level support given to the second respondent after the Christmas Eve incident”, and that Ms Peggie “required to have raised her concerns with the first respondent as the decision-maker rather than with the colleague to whom it had been granted” regarding shared use of the changing rooms.

Maya Forstater, chief executive of sex-based rights charity Sex Matters, which supported Ms Peggie, said: “We are pleased that Sandie Peggie has won her claim of harassment against NHS Fife, and that the hospital trust was criticised for its terrible handling of the complaint against her.

“Overall we are disappointed in the tribunal’s approach, which sought to reach a spurious ‘balance’ between a woman’s right to undress with privacy and dignity, and the right of an employee with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment not to be discriminated against.”

Scottish Conservative shadow equalities minister Tess White MSP said: “NHS Fife shamefully tried to silence a nurse who stood up for women’s rights, then squandered a fortune of taxpayers’ money defending their harassment of her.

“The health board have serious questions to answer – and so does John Swinney and Neil Gray, who backed the discredited management team at every turn.”