Beth Upton: Trans person ’used women’s room despite colleague’s fears’

A trans doctor used the women’s changing room at her hospital despite a colleague’s concerns, a tribunal heard yesterday.

Dr Beth Upton said she decided to put on her ‘big girl pants and be brave’ and use the changing room just days after being challenged about it by a veteran nurse.

Dr Upton, who was born a man but now identifies as a woman, accused nurse Sandie Peggie of bullying for raising concerns.

The 29-year-old doctor was told she should not be using the room at Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy in Fife, by Mrs Peggie on Christmas Eve 2023.

After being suspended over a resulting bullying allegation, Mrs Peggie, who has worked at the hospital for 30 years, took NHS Fife and Dr Upton to a tribunal.

The hearing has already been told that Dr Upton insists she is ‘biologically female’ and she claims there is ‘no agreed definition of biological sex’. She started transitioning three years ago and told the tribunal she felt entitled to use female changing facilities because ‘I think I’m a woman’.

However, Naomi Cunningham, who represents Mrs Peggie, said ‘insisting that her client and her colleagues’ accept Dr Upton used the women’s changing room without showing ‘any signs of discomfort’ was asking them to ‘pretend to believe something which you and they both know is false’.

Mrs Peggie, who has said she was ‘embarrassed and intimidated’ by Dr Upton’s presence in the changing room, had encountered her there three times in 2023. During the first two she had waited outside, but after the third on Christmas Eve, she challenged her.

Yesterday the doctor told the Dundee-based tribunal she had gone to the female changing room again on December 28. She said: ‘I got to work, and on the spur of the moment I thought “yeah, I’ll put my big girl pants on and be brave”.

‘Unfortunately, it turns out I’m just not as brave as I thought I was and decided to exit when I felt I was a further risk of harassment.’

The visit came days after an email to line manager Dr Kate Searle was sent on Christmas Day, in which Dr Upton said she did not ‘feel safe using the changing rooms’ while Mrs Peggie was there.

Ms Cunningham said there were ‘mixed messages’ about whether or not it was true that Dr Upton was afraid of Mrs Peggie.

The lawyer suggested she made up the December 28 incident because there had been no action following her ‘extraordinarily serious complaint against a colleague’.

Ms Cunningham added: ‘You were frustrated… you were driving the message home something needs to be done.’ Dr Upton said she ‘didn’t fabricate this’. She also insisted she was not obliged to share her trans status with patients.

The tribunal continues.