An NHS trust in County Durham and Darlington has been criticised in court after seven female nurses who won an employment tribunal against it for being forced to share a changing room with a transgender colleague sought £400,000 in legal costs. The nurses' lawyers argued the trust's defence was "hopeless" and that a costly three-week tribunal could have been avoided, given a Supreme Court ruling in April 2025 confirming that "sex" means "biological sex" under equality law. The case highlights the financial and reputational fallout for NHS bodies that resist applying that ruling to workplace facilities.

County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust has already paid the nurses almost £200,000 in compensation after a tribunal found it had "violated their dignity" by requiring them to change alongside Rose Henderson, a transgender woman, at Darlington Memorial Hospital, creating what the judge called a "hostile, humiliating and degrading" environment. The nurses are now seeking 90% of their £443,000 costs, while the trust is understood to have spent around £600,000 defending the case, bringing the total public money involved to roughly £1.25 million. It also emerged that a public governor had warned the trust a year before the tribunal that suppressing discussion risked comparisons with the Lucy Letby scandal, while the trust maintains it was right to fight the case on the basis of "perception".