Trans women can be excluded from female only changing rooms and toilets, the equalities watchdog has ruled.

Guidance surrounding single-sex spaces has listed examples where it is lawful to exclude someone who is born a man from women’s services, including rape counselling, refuges and fitness classes.

Legitimate reasons for excluding trans people from single-sex services include the privacy and dignity of the users, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said.

The long-awaited guidance on the impact of equality law has been welcomed by women’s rights campaign groups, including Sex Matters, who described it as a “positive” and “welcome” step.

“It recognises that people wanting single-sex services for reasons of privacy, dignity, safety or trauma have legitimate needs,” the group said. “It doesn’t call them bigots or transphobes, or accuse them of ignorance or bigotry.”

The guide, published on Monday, tells service providers that they can only limit a service based on someone’s sex if it “is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”.

They clarify that this “could be for reasons of privacy, decency, to prevent trauma or to ensure health and safety”.

Clarifying the law which has become a battleground in recent years, the EHRC notes that there “are circumstances where a lawfully-established separate or single-sex service provider can exclude, modify or limit access to their service for trans people”.

The examples of single-sex services include wards in hospitals and nursing homes where “users need special care, supervision or attention” or separate male and female changing rooms where “a woman might reasonably object to the presence of a man”.

‘Trauma and safety’

Examples of where single-sex services can be provided are group counselling sessions for female sex assault victims where it is judged the victims are “likely to be traumatised by the presence of a person who is biologically male”.

Trans women could also be excluded from a domestic abuse refuge that offers emergency accommodation to female survivors if they “feel uncomfortable sharing accommodation… for reasons of trauma and safety”. The provider should compile a list of alternative sources of support, it is suggested.

If a gym has separate-sex changing rooms and there “is concern about the safety and dignity of trans men changing in an open plan environment” the gym could exclude trans people from single sex spaces if it “decides to introduce an additional gender-neutral changing room with self-contained units”.

Leisure centres would be able to exclude trans women from female-only fitness classes because of the amount of physical contact involved, it states.

The EHRC also gives an example of a community centre with male and female toilets whose users say they would note “that they would not use the centre if the toilets were open to members of the opposite biological sex, for reasons of privacy and dignity or because of their religious belief”.

The guidance adds: “It decides to introduce an additional gender-neutral toilet. It puts up signs telling all users that they may use either the toilet for their biological sex or to use the gender neutral toilet if they feel more comfortable doing so.”

Balance the needs of all users

The EHRC adds that you can provide a service to one sex only if providing it jointly would “not be sufficiently effective”.

An example given is “if women of a particular religion or belief will not use the local swimming pool at the same time as men, women-only swimming sessions could be provided as well as mainly-mixed sessions”.

The guidance applies whether or not the individual has a Gender Recognition Certificate to show that they have legally changed gender, the guide states.

But service providers are warned that they are required to balance the needs of all users.

Excluding a trans person from that service might be unlawful if it cannot be shown that it is a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”, the EHRC says.

Both sex and gender reassignment are characteristics protected under the Equality Act 2010, which protect people from harassment and discrimination.