The Charity Commission has promised to work “at pace” to update relevant aspects of its guidance in the light of guidance from the equalities watchdog.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission yesterday published its long-awaited draft code of practice for services, public functions and associations.
The document sets out how public bodies, business and other service providers should respond to last year’s Supreme Court ruling that sex in the Equality Act refers only to biological sex.
The guidance, which will be laid before parliament for 40 days before coming into effect, says single-sex spaces must be used on the basis of biological sex. This means, for example, that a trans woman should not use female-only toilets or changing rooms.
The move has been welcomed by gender-critical campaigners but criticised by others for the negative impact it could have on people.
The Charity Commission has been awaiting the guidance and in January David Holdsworth, chief executive of the regulator, urged ministers to speed up the publication of the EHRC guidance to give clarity for charities in this area.
His intervention came after Girlguiding UK and the National Federation of Women’s Institutes both said they would exclude trans women from their services following the Supreme Court ruling.
After the publication of the EHRC guidance, a Charity Commission spokesperson told Third Sector that charities would be able to assess its implications for their work during the parliamentary approval process and take any legal advice that might be needed.
“Meanwhile, now the commission has seen the code, we will continue to work to update our guidance specifically for trustees of charities that provide services or are associations,” the spokesperson said.
“We will work at pace to do this but must also carefully review our guidance against the final code once that is published by parliament.
“As charities can have any combination of charitable purposes or stated beneficiaries, detailed guidance on the intersection of charity law with equalities legislation will help trustees make lawful decisions in the best interests of their charity.”