THE NHS is facing landmark legal action as female nurses protest at being forced to share a changing room with a transgender colleague.
The 26 women who have complained say the nurse has not had reassignment surgery and appears to take a “keen interest” in female staff.
One of the nurses said: “We don’t feel safe because we strip down to our underwear and the individual doesn’t just stay by his locker.
“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.
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The nurses say their trans colleague at County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust told them they had stopped taking hormone treatment as they were trying for a baby with a female partner.
One nurse, who was sexually abused as a child, said she was “petrified and started hyperventilating” following one uncomfortable encounter.
She said: “He stood there, two metres away from me. With tight black boxer shorts with holes in them and he asked for a third time if I was getting changed yet.”
Another nurse added that “she has been close to tears”, in the shared space.
In March, the nurses wrote to trust bosses: “We do not consider it appropriate to have a sexually active biological male sharing our changing facilities.”
They did not receive a written response but there was an impromptu meeting where the ward was told “they need to compromise.”
The transgender nurse at the hospital has continued to be allowed access to the female changing room.