GB News presenter Michelle Dewberry has revealed she’s cancelled her Virgin Active membership after “seeing a man in the changing female changing rooms” and being dissatisfied with the gym’s response to her concerns. The Mail has more.
Dewberry, who won the second season of The Apprentice, shared a screenshot of the gym’s reply to her email seeking clarification about its policy that read: “The changing rooms are split between female and male, with children attending up to the age of eight-years-old of a different gender.
“For the female changing rooms in particular, this would cover females of all ages, boys up to the age of eight, transgender females, and non-binary members.”
Taking to X, formerly Twitter, she wrote: “Whatever happened to our right to a single-sex changing space?
“If you are among the minority of woman [sic] who are comfortable sharing your single-sex changing room with adult males, I completely respect that.
“But what about the majority of us who aren’t?”
Dewberry did not elaborate further, or reveal if it was a transwoman she encountered.
Guidance issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in 2022 said it is legal for gyms to limit these communal spaces to a single-sex as long as a gender-neutral changing room is also provided for trans people.
MailOnline has contacted Virgin Active for comment.
Britain’s human rights body said that service providers wishing to limit services to a single sex are legally able to do so, provided the reasons are justified and proportionate.
Dewberry’s post divided X as some users agreed it was unfair that “the men’s [changing room] is the men’s and the women’s is a free-for-all”.
Others questioned whether Virgin Active provided “communal changing rooms, where you strip in front of each other? Or do they have individual cubicles?”
“I had the same issue a number of years ago and also cancelled my membership,” one user replied to Dewberry.
It comes after British fitness influencer Natalee Barnett faced fierce criticism for refusing to allow trans women to train at her female-only gym as the equality law now divides the UK’s health clubs and training centres.
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