FA-2025-000058 - [2025] EWHC 2685 (Fam)

The Regime of the GRA 2004

It is important to identify the central philosophy of the GRA 2004, which is intended to facilitate gender recognition, predicated on the realisation that protracting an Applicant’s life in an intermediate zone between two genders serves very little purpose and generates what ought to be avoidable distress. Baker LJ put it in these terms in Jay (supra):

I agree with Ms McCann's central submission that the GRA is a statue designed to facilitate gender recognition, that the statutory regime is permissive rather than restrictive, and that the evidential requirements are ancillary to the statutory criteria and any directions made by the panel must not be elevated to a status which sideline or undermine the statutory criteria or frustrate the process.”

This philosophy finds expression in Schedule 1, para 6 of the GRA 2004:

“6(4)A Panel must determine an application without a hearing unless the Panel considers that a hearing is necessary.”

Thus, the GRA 2004 mandates consideration of the application without a hearing. Hearings are not prohibited but they are exceptional. In this application, the Panel identified an issue which they concluded required them to obtain further evidence from the Applicant. The chronology is important.

On 22^nd March 2024, the Applicant applied to the Panel for a GRC. The documents he provided are set out in his statement. It is convenient to list them here, but I will refer to them in greater detail below. They include:

evidence of having lived as male for two years prior to making the application, bank statements, university and student finance letters, a university transcript, a HMRC P45 form, a mobile phone bill, a council tax bill, a water bill, and a social housing statement; and

medical reports from: (a) Dr. Pasterski, chartered psychologist, dated 29^th January 2020; (b) Dr. Anna Barnes, a consultant psychiatrist, dated 28^th February 2024; (c) a deed of change of name dated 1^st April 2016; and (d) a Statutory Declaration that the Applicant had lived as male since April 2016 and intends to continue to live as male until death, dated 21^st March 2024.

On 9^th August 2024, the Panel gave directions seeking further information regarding the Applicant’s desire to conceive a child. I set the Directions out in full, again, they are manifestly important: