The Equality Act Has Changed. Has Your Board Actually Looked?
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In July, the Charity Commission said something unusually direct to trustees: don't wait.
Following the Supreme Court's judgment in For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers, the Equality and Human Rights Commission had a revised statutory Code of Practice for the Equality Act 2010 in preparation. The Charity Commission's message is blunt — charities shouldn't sit on their hands until charity-specific guidance arrives before working out what the changes mean for them.
That warning matters more now than it did in July, because the waiting is over.
The new EHRC Code of Practice came into force on 5 August 2026.
If your board hasn't yet considered whether any of this touches your charity, this is probably the moment to do so.
The law hasn't changed as much as the conversation around it suggests
The Supreme Court ruled in April 2025 that the terms "woman", "man" and "sex" in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex. That's the headline, and it's the part most people have heard.
What tends to get lost is what the judgment didn't do. It did not remove the protections transgender people have under the Equality Act. Gender reassignment remains a protected characteristic, in full.
What the judgment does affect is how organisations apply the parts of the Act where sex matters — separate and single-sex services, in particular. The EHRC's revised Code reflects that shift. For most charities, this will be a quiet, technical adjustment. For some, it will have real practical consequences.
"We were waiting for guidance" was never going to be a strong answer
The Charity Commission's July warning landed where it was meant to: squarely with trustees.
Trustees are responsible for making sure their charity complies with the law. The Commission was explicit that unreasonable delay in taking steps towards compliance could itself amount to a breach of trustees' duties. Waiting for someone else to issue the definitive word was never going to count as due diligence.
That doesn't mean every charity needs to rewrite every policy this month. It means every board owes itself one honest question: does this change touch anything we actually do?
For a good number of charities, the answer will be very little. For others — those running services, working with children or vulnerable adults, operating residential facilities, managing membership organisations, offering single-sex activities, or simply managing toilets and changing rooms — there's more here worth sitting with.
Start smaller than you think you need to
A proportionate review beats a panicked one.
Look at where sex or gender shows up across your charity's activities, services, policies and decision-making. That might include:
- Who can access particular services or activities?
- Do you run any women-only or men-only services, groups or activities?
- How are toilets, changing rooms or accommodation managed?
- Do your safeguarding procedures make assumptions about sex or gender?
- Do application, membership or monitoring forms ask people to record sex or gender?
- Do any policies use the words woman, man, female, male or transgender?
- Has guidance already gone out to staff or volunteers that now needs checking against the revised Code?
Not every question will land for every charity.
The bar isn't perfection. It's a paper trail.
The first governance step doesn't need to be a solution.
Put the issue on the agenda. Record that trustees considered the new EHRC Code and identify what, if anything, needs further review. Ask someone to check the relevant policies or practices and report back at a set date.
Where the legal position genuinely is complicated for your charity, get proper advice rather than trying to reason your way through Equality Act nuance around the board table. Nobody's paid to be an employment lawyer as well as a trustee.
What all of that leaves you with is an audit trail. Instead of discovering in a year that nobody thought about this, your minutes show trustees identified the issue, weighed its relevance, assigned action, and followed it through. That is what defensible governance looks like on paper — because, eventually, it may need to be looked at on paper.
One thing worth saying plainly
This is a subject where discussion can drift into the wider public debate within about ninety seconds. Trustees need to hold the line on what's actually theirs to decide.
The question in front of your board was never "what do we think about this, as people." It's "what does the law now require of this charity, and are our services, policies and practices compliant?" Those are different conversations, and only one of them belongs in a board meeting.
It's also worth holding both parts of the picture at once. Complying with this part of equality law gives no charity permission to lose sight of the other — gender reassignment remains protected, and good governance treats it that way.
Put this on the next agenda
One question, asked plainly: does the revised Equality Act Code of Practice affect any of our services, activities, facilities or policies?
If the answer is no, minute why. If it's yes, decide what needs reviewing, who's doing it, and when they're reporting back. If you don't know yet, that's fine too — as long as finding out is the next item, not a someday item.
A Code sitting unread in someone's inbox has never been a governance position. It's just a delay with a document attached.
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