I wrote to many public authorities almost a year ago asking what Impact Assessments were carried out regarding the LGBT Youth Scotland publication ‘Supporting Transgender Young People: Guidance for Schools in Scotland’ LGBT Youth Scotland (2017).

13th March 2018

Please provide:

1/ copies of all policies and procedures regarding transgender and non-binary school children.

2/ copies of all Equality Impact Assessments in relation to any new or revised policies or procedures regarding transgender and non-binary school children.

They responded a few weeks later with the following letter.

For reasons unknown this response has not been listed on the Government’s website page for Freedom of Information requests.

All the public authorities I wrote to replied similarly, stating that they had not carried out any Impact Assessments. (I first wrote about it on Twitter, details in this post). It was then reported widely in a number media outlets The Herald, The Scotsman and the BBC. The negative responses from all of the authorities revealed just how great the scale of the problem was, but public awareness was now slowly emerging, which in turn encouraged others to also begin campaigning on this very important issue.