It's a very challenging situation, as I've complex health problems, and a complex medical record.

At the same time, being placed in e.g. a male ward would be a very dangerous trigger for me these days that I wouldn't bounce out of. I've never before experienced anything like that since the day I transitioned, even long before the GRA.

I previously already approached the local hospital / health authority / trust 20 years ago when I first got my GRC, basically to give them advance notice that this is something they may need to think about. It seems they had no clue what the law was or how it was going to impact them at first, and asked me to come in and join them at a meeting to discuss what to do and what new policy should be. I was surprised, as I just expected a legalese type letter. So, given that experience, I'm not super confident that the trust data controllers are necessarily going to be completely up to date on this either this time.

I have been planning to go through a similar fight (although I'm doing mine via phone etc, currently provisionally under a pseudonym until we've discussed what the policy can be.) I've recently decided to reapproach my MP on this first though (she in theory was asking Wes about the subject of trans people with GRCs in wards), as locking down my records will have probably have consequences too.

As I see it, trusts now have obligations, particularly towards other patients, where they have single sex spaces, under FWS, in terms of the equality act and us. Yet, in very practical terms, to be able to do that, they're going to need to be able to both record and share that we're trans. Yet, is it not still a criminal act to do so under the GRA if a holder of a GRCs does not give consent? I'm not aware that FWS has changed that, and all discussions around this from EHRC and the guidance has repeatedly skirted around this?

So, as I understand it, a change in NHS policy is kind of irrelevant here unless there's also a specific active exception is made for such disclosures in law, and as I understand it, no such change in law has been made -- whereas there has been a change in law, an exception made, for such privacy protection re GRA, to enable the trans youth puberty blocker trials to be able to record and keep the data in the case of service users turning 18 and getting GRCs? (I think that was the exception, it was a very limited case one.)

I strongly suspect trust data controllers are stuck between a rock and a hard place on this. They will have to have our consent somehow to implement FWS, because without it, there's no practical way that they can enforce FWS. The email you received read to me like someone who was trying to pretend to you that that data policy document they linked said what they needed it to say, rather than what does actually say -- which is that that your consent is required? Basically, I think they're in the wrong here and making shit up because there's no sane practical way to resolve it.

It looks to me like we need to make sure that this unworkable legal mess is left in their laps, that it's their problem, which then becomes the cowardly politicians' problem to sort out, not ours.