Employment judge Sandy Kemp has dismissed claims NHS nurse Sandie Peggie made against her transgender colleague, Dr Beth Upton. In a victory for Dr Upton, the tribunal unanimously dismissed all of Peggie’s allegations against her and all of the allegations against the health board, apart from four specific points of Peggie’s harassment complaint.

Peggie was suspended from her job after encountering Dr Upton in a female changing room at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy on Christmas Eve in 2023. Dr Upton branded the Christmas Eve encounter a hate incident. The tribunal has not painted Peggie’s character in the best light, and the judgment says some of Peggie’s comments to Dr Upton “amounted to an incident of harassment”.

NHS Fife’s handling of the dispute between Peggie and Dr Upton was an absolute dumpster fire. Taken together, the health board’s series of failures paint a picture of an organisation that couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery. They were slow to act, which exacerbated the situation, and the resulting tribunal has cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. The fact that Dr Upton and Peggie ended up in the same changing room not once but twice after the original incident is shambolic.

I can empathise that this tribunal must have been awful for........

© Herald Scotland