Haech Lockwood v Cheshire and Wirral NHS Foundation Trust and 6 others — 2025

The tribunal heard complaints of harassment related to gender reassignment arising from incidents between October 2023 and January 2024, including alleged misgendering, deadnaming, a vaccination-clinic exchange, an HR contract issue, an allocation of a service user, and a corridor interaction. It also considered time-limit issues, but because it rejected the first alleged incident on the merits, it did not need to decide whether time should be extended.

On the protected characteristic point, the tribunal accepted that the claimant was non-binary, had changed their name by deed poll to Haech Lockwood, and used they/them pronouns. It held, however, that the claimant did not have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment within section 7 Equality Act 2010, reasoning that the claimant had taken steps away from their female birth sex to a non-binary identity, but did not propose to transition from female to male. The tribunal referred to section 7, Taylor v JLR Limited, R(AA) v NHS England, Pepper v Hart, and For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers.

The tribunal nevertheless went on to consider harassment under section 26 Equality Act 2010. It accepted that the claimant was distressed, upset and offended by the incidents, but held that the conduct did not have the effect of violating dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment when viewed objectively. In reaching that conclusion it referred to the seriousness threshold in Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board v Hughes, the subjective and objective approach in Pemberton v Inwood, and the contextual points in Weeks v Newham College of Further Education.

For the ICT-related incidents, the tribunal found that the service-desk misgendering by Jane Graves, the later call-log misgendering by Brett Williamson, and the Mail Central deadname issue were mistakes made in a pressured working environment, against a background of incomplete system information and extensive efforts by the Trust to make corrections. It accepted that apologies were given promptly or through the grievance process, and that steps were taken to record preferred pronouns where possible.

For the remaining incidents, the tribunal found that Yvette Dunn had been quoting a patient when she used "she" and "Helen", that her later email response was understandable in context, and that the 31 January 2024 corridor exchange was not an attempt to ignore the claimant. It found the vaccination-clinic misgendering occurred in a busy drop-in setting where staff were focused on clinical safety, the HR contract issue involved a historic document that the respondent was entitled to retain unchanged, and the service-user allocation had a reasonable explanation because the patient had said they were happy to speak to a clinician of any gender. All complaints were therefore dismissed and no award was made.