![\"Highgate](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/highgate-men-s-pond.jpg\")
<\/p>\nStaff at Highgate Men’s Pond in London have been instructed not to engage in conversations with visitors about a recent trans ruling, according to an internal notice.<\/p>\n
The directive, posted in the staff hut, states: “Until further notices from our senior management team we must not get drawn into any conversations with swimmers or visitors about the ruling.”<\/p>\n
Instead, employees are told to provide a standard response if questioned about the issue.<\/p>\n
The standard response staff are instructed to give is: “We are continuing as we are until we hear further from our senior management team”.<\/p>\n
Staff at Highgate Men’s Pond in London have been instructed not to engage in conversations with visitors about a recent trans ruling<\/p>\n
GETTY<\/p>\n
Staff must also refer any questions to the press office, the Telegraph reports.<\/p>\n
They are directed to report swimmers who raise concerns over the lack of single-sex provision to their line manager.<\/p>\n
The notice concludes: “Please make sure you report any issues or inappropriate behaviour related to the above, using our incident reporting form and let your Team Leader know so we can escalate accordingly.”<\/p>\n
The directive comes as campaigners prepared to stage a protest at the Men’s Pond on Monday, dubbed “Bank Holiday Man-Day”.<\/p>\n
Venice Allan, a 49-year-old feminist activist, is leading efforts to restore Kenwood Ladies’ Pond as a female-only space.<\/p>\n
Campaigners plan to take over the male bathing spot to demonstrate against the City of London Corporation’s failure to ban trans women from the women’s pond.<\/p>\n
A similar protest in 2018 saw women in fake beards and swimsuits removed by police.<\/p>\n
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: <\/strong><\/p>\n They are directed to report swimmers who raise concerns over the lack of single-sex provision to their line manager<\/p>\n Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n “There are three ponds and people with gender identities are safe and welcome at the mixed-sex pond,” Allan said.<\/p>\n “We will continue to invade the men’s space until ours is female-only again.”<\/p>\n Allan criticised the council chiefs’ decision to limit staff discussions about the ruling.<\/p>\n “Not content with breaking the law, the City of London Corporation is now dragging its own staff into complicity,” she said.<\/p>\n “This draconian order appears to gag workers from even acknowledging their employer’s unlawful conduct to the public.”<\/p>\n She called the instruction to report concerned swimmers “chilling”.<\/p>\n Last week, a prominent barrister told The Telegraph that continuing to label the ponds as “men’s” and “ladies'” could expose the corporation to legal challenge.<\/p>\n Sarah Vine KC said if the City of London Corporation wishes to maintain its gender self-ID stance, it “should not describe the ponds as anything other than mixed-sex”.<\/p>\n She warned that continued gender-specific descriptions would expose the Corporation to discrimination claims.<\/p>\n The practical effect, she argued, would likely “result in a de facto single-sex facility for men” with “no corresponding provision for women”.<\/p>\n Vine added that this situation exists “despite the fact that women’s overall need for safety and privacy is generally higher than that of men.”<\/p>\n A spokesman for the City of London Corporation said: \u201cIt is completely false to suggest that the City Corporation is not compliant with existing UK law. <\/p>\n “We take our obligations very seriously and a carefully considered decision in this complex matter will be taken in due course.<\/p>\n \u201cIn line with many other affected organisations we are carefully considering the judgment and awaiting statutory guidance from the EHRC which, by law, service providers must take into account.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Staff at Highgate Men’s Pond in London have been instructed not to engage in conversations with visitors about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,18794,257,12,512,16,1259,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-77573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-lgbt","12":"tag-london","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-sgg","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-uk-news","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114457601498207516","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Highgate](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1746484272_995_highgate-men-s-pond.jpg\")