The long-awaited Equality and Human Rights Commission Practice code for the Equality Act 2010 for Service, Public Functions and Associations is now out.
Spectra is aware of early reports in the UK media and acknowledge, people will interpret the code in different ways. Our early take is that this code does not balance the needs of our diverse communities to access single sex spaces, and let’s trans people down. We are in conversations with lawyers and other organisations to better understand how this will impact our communities, how the guidance might be interpreted and what we can do about it collectively.
Spectra runs a range of lived experience services led by and for trans people including peer mentoring, counselling, groupwork support and health advocacy, with many of these services running on weekdays. Do reach out to us via email or directly via our Instagram, for quicker responses.
*If you are in urgent need, call LGBT Switchboard, the national LGBT helpline.
And to all our trans and non-binary service users, staff, volunteers, and wider stakeholders, take care of yourselves today and over the weekend. It’s tempting to endlessly scroll on social media, but we do better for ourselves when we can reach out and talk to a friend, a support group, or helpline. Think about doing something nice for yourself this weekend if you can, and remember, trans joy is real.
This isn’t the end, we can still fight this and we can do so together.
We will provide a more detailed response to the code as soon as we can.
With love and solidarity, Spectra.