Engineer used ‘secret’ toilet after trans colleague encounter, tribunal told

An engineer began using a “secret toilet” at her workplace after encountering a transgender colleague in the female bathrooms, an employment tribunal has heard.

Maria Kelly said she does not want to “sacrifice my privacy and my dignity” by sharing toilets with a man and is taking legal action against her employer Leonardo UK.

She has lodged a complaint alleging harassment, direct and indirect discrimination.

Ms Kelly, people and capability lead for the aerospace firm’s electronics department, said that as someone who suffers from heavy periods, female toilets are important to her as a place of refuge and privacy to deal with them.

She told the tribunal in Edinburgh that after encountering a transgender colleague in the female bathrooms she began using two toilets that only women know about.

Ms Kelly, who works in the aerospace company’s Edinburgh offices, said: “In March 2023 I was walking out of the toilet and one of my trans identifying male colleagues walked in and I was a little taken aback, I didn’t say anything, I just said ‘hi’ and walked out.

“I had just been washing blood off my hands so I was genuinely quite taken aback so I then started using what we refer to as the secret toilets – they are secret because they are tucked away.”

She added: “I don’t know any man who knows about them. I know women who use them because of the increased privacy.”

Ms Kelly said she had first become aware of a transgender person using the female toilets in 2019 when a member of staff from an office elsewhere in the UK came to Edinburgh and female colleagues told her about it, seeming “genuinely upset”.

She said she did not raise the issue with the company at the time as she feared being labelled “transphobic” or being put on the “naughty list”.

The inquiry heard in 2023 she became aware that for a period of six to nine months there were three people, referred to as A, B and C, that she suspected were transgender who she assumed had been told they could use the ladies’ toilets in her office building, one of whom has since left the company.

She said she was later told there were two transgender people at the company.

Ms Kelly’s lawyer Naomi Cunningham asked: “How did it make you feel to know they were using the toilet?”

She replied: “It was running into person B as I was coming out of the toilet that made me think: ‘We are going to have to stop this. I am not going to sacrifice my privacy, my dignity sharing the toilet with a man.’

“I think within a day or two I had a conversation with my line manager – I think this was March 2023. I wrote to my line manager, asking: ‘Can you confirm if we have a toilet policy and if the policy is on the basis of sex or gender?'”

She told the tribunal that in April last year she received a message from someone within the company telling her the policy was that anyone who self-identified as a woman could use the ladies’ toilets.

Ms Kelly also said that in October 2024 the female sign was removed from the “secret squirrel toilets” and was replaced with a WC badge.

Ms Cunningham asked Ms Kelly for her understanding of what constitutes a man and a woman.

She replied: “It’s always been related to sex, so it’s the sex that you were born, so if you were born male you remain male and if you were born female you remain female.”

Asked whether she believes it is possible for a human being to change sex, she said: “No.”

Giving evidence on Wednesday, Ms Kelly told the inquiry she began grievance proceedings about the toilet issues and had to discuss the matter in a room with three men.

She became emotional as she said: “I couldn’t believe that I had to sit in a room and justify why dealing with menstruation is a specific issue that women need privacy and dignity about, and then have to explain the consequences of menopause and the unpredictable nature of perimenopausal symptoms.”

Susanne Tanner KC, representing Leonardo, cross-examined Ms Kelly on Wednesday afternoon.

She mentioned meetings the engineer had taken part in with the company where she discussed her concerns about access to bathrooms.

Ms Tanner said that during one meeting, a senior staff member said her views “might amount to something under the Hate Crime Act”.

Ms Kelly said this comment had been “out of the blue” and had left people in the room “really uncomfortable”.

She went on to say that despite the company offering explanations of its policies on toilet access, she still felt they were “not clear”.

The tribunal, taking place before employment Judge Sutherland, continues.