From 5 August 2026, new statutory Code of Practice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) sets out how screen businesses should approach single-sex services, facilities and events, from toilets and changing rooms through to previews, screenings and membership schemes restricted by sex. This follows the Supreme Court's 2025 ruling that “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 means biological sex, not gender identity, and it reflects the EHRC's own view of how that ruling changes their guidance. The Code is persuasive rather than the last word: following it is one way of showing your organisation has taken a reasonable, proportionate approach, but it isn't the only way.
This doesn’t mean your business has to be anything other than genuinely welcoming to trans and non-binary cast, crew and visitors. What it does mean is that if you offer anything on a single-sex basis, you need to be able to show that doing so is reasonable and proportionate under the legal test that’s now changed.
This guide explains what’s changed, and what you need to do. This is a fast-moving and contested area of law, and screen businesses should expect further clarification, challenge and change in the months ahead.
This is a difficult change for many trans people to read about, and that's a reality worth acknowledging rather than glossing over. Whatever your screen business’s position, staff should be equipped to treat trans customers and colleagues with ordinary courtesy and respect throughout.
Providing a service, facility, event or membership scheme only to one sex is, on the face of it, sex discrimination. It’s only lawful where a specific exception in the Equality Act 2010 applies, and the new Code explains how that exception should work in practice, now that “sex” means biological sex (sex at birth), rather than gender identity or the sex recorded on a Gender Recognition Certificate.
The Code itself is guidance, not law. It doesn’t create any new legal obligation, and it can’t override the Equality Act or a court’s own reading of it. It sets out the EHRC’s view of how the existing law applies, and courts and tribunals must have regard to it when a dispute comes before them. Following the Code is one way of showing your business took a reasonable, proportionate approach, but it isn’t the only way: an organisation that departs from it can still demonstrate reasonableness through its own documented assessment, provided that assessment properly weighs the Code’s legitimate aim and proportionality tests.
The Code applies a two-part test to anything run on a single-sex basis: is there a legitimate aim (like privacy, decency or safety), and is restricting it to one sex a proportionate way of meeting that aim? A blanket policy in either direction, always excluding trans people or never doing so, is the highest-risk approach. A case-by-case, documented decision is what the Code expects.
You can’t get around this by running something as “for women and trans women, not men.” Once a service, facility or event admits people who aren’t biologically the sex it’s supposedly for, it stops being single-sex in law altogether, and excluding men from it becomes ordinary sex discrimination with no defence available. The same logic applies to a women-only preview screening as it does to a toilet: if you want something genuinely open to trans people, the safer route is to make it open to everyone, not to redefine what “single-sex” means.
This sits alongside, not instead of, your separate duties as an employer, which are covered by different legislation (see below).
This is the question most productions will actually face. The Code gives a practical example: where you have the space and budget, offer conventional single-sex facilities plus at least one lockable, gender-neutral option. That satisfies privacy and safety while reducing the impact on trans crew, cast or visitors.
On location, this usually means: standard single-sex portable toilets, or a multi-stall welfare trailer split into men’s and women’s sections, plus at least one separate, lockable, individual unit anyone can use regardless of sex. Providing only the single-sex row or trailer, with no separate gender-neutral option at all, doesn’t meet the same standard, and neither does leaving a trans crew member with nothing they’re able to use, which the Code says is very unlikely ever to be proportionate.
Staff aren’t expected to police this. The Code is explicit that questioning someone’s sex at the toilet door is generally the wrong approach: it’s rarely practical or appropriate. Clear signage does the work instead.
Dressing rooms and wardrobe fittings typically involve undressing, which the Code accepts is a context where someone can reasonably object to sharing with the opposite sex. Hair and make-up trailers don’t always involve undressing, but shared, cramped spaces can raise similar comfort and privacy concerns, particularly during costume fittings that happen in the same trailer. This sits closer to your position as an employer than as a service provider, so the new Code doesn’t directly cover it; existing tribunal case law does.
In one recent case, a tribunal found it was lawful for an employer to let a trans employee use a particular changing room, but that failing to put a quick, practical fix in place once a colleague raised a concern amounted to unlawful harassment of her. The lesson: it’s less about which arrangement you choose, and more about acting promptly and sensitively once someone raises a concern.
Practical steps for cast and crew facilities:
If you're running a cinema, the same rules apply, but the practical pressures are different. You're dealing with customers rather than cast and crew, often in a much smaller, older building with far less room to add a third option.
The Code's two-part test still applies: whatever you offer needs a legitimate aim (privacy, decency or safety) and needs to be proportionate. Where budget and space allow, the same "single-sex plus at least one gender-neutral, lockable option" model applies to customer toilets as it does to unit bases. Where your building genuinely can't accommodate a third space, converting one single-sex toilet into a lockable, individual, all-user facility can be a proportionate alternative, provided you've documented why a fuller solution wasn't practicable.
Membership schemes, preview screenings or discounted tickets restricted to one sex face the same "for women and trans women, not men" problem as anywhere else: once a scheme admits people who aren't biologically the sex it's for, it stops being single-sex in law, and there's no defence for excluding men from it.
Even before you get to the Equality Act, staff and crew welfare facilities are separately governed by the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992. These require either conventional separate-sex facilities, or individual, fully enclosed, lockable rooms anyone can use. An open-plan “gender-neutral” set-up without individually lockable rooms doesn’t satisfy this regulation, whatever the position under equality law.
Helpfully, this is the same model the new Code favours anyway, so getting your unit base facilities right against health and safety rules tends to satisfy both regimes at once.
Sex and gender reassignment aren’t the only protected characteristics in play here. Since 2021, tribunals have confirmed that a “gender-critical” belief (broadly, that sex is biological and immutable) can be a protected philosophical belief, in exactly the same way a belief in trans inclusion can be protected. Holding either view isn’t, on its own, a reason to treat someone less favourably.
What can cross the line into unlawful harassment is how a belief is acted on. Persistent misgendering of a colleague, or refusing to work with someone because of their gender identity, can be unlawful harassment related to gender reassignment. Treating someone badly because they hold gender-critical views is equally capable of being unlawful, the other way round.
For cast, crew and production offices:
If your production happens to learn that someone has a Gender Recognition Certificate, or has applied for one, passing that on without consent can be a criminal offence under the Gender Recognition Act 2004, separate from anything in equality law. Keep this kind of information to those who genuinely need it.
Information about someone’s sex, trans status or medical transition is also capable of being special category data under UK GDPR, needing its own processing condition. Limit what you collect, restrict who can see it, and set a clear retention period, particularly if you’re asking anyone to confirm their sex for a specific operational reason.
The Equality Act, the Supreme Court’s ruling and the new Code apply in the same way across England, Scotland and Wales, since equality law is reserved to Westminster. Scottish and Welsh public bodies and funders have some additional reporting duties on top of the general position described here.
Northern Ireland is different. The Equality Act doesn’t extend there at all. Northern Ireland has its own separate sex discrimination legislation and its own regulator, the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, which has said the Supreme Court’s ruling is persuasive but not binding on Northern Ireland law. Northern Ireland’s own legal position is still being tested and isn’t expected to be resolved before the end of 2026. If your production operates there, don’t assume the rest of this guide applies without separate, Northern Ireland-specific advice.
This is a developing area, and further litigation over how the Code applies in practice is likely. Treat any policy you adopt now as a considered, documented position, not a final answer, and revisit it as the picture becomes clearer.