High Court Hears Who May Use the Hampstead Heath Ponds

The High Court has finished hearing a challenge to the rules on who may swim in the single-sex ponds on Hampstead Heath, and it has not yet said who is right. The case, brought by the charity Sex Matters against the City of London Corporation, is one of the first to test what the Supreme Court's ruling on the legal meaning of sex means for a service run by a public authority. Judgment was reserved at the end of a two-day hearing. A written decision is expected in the coming weeks.

The ponds are the Kenwood Ladies' Pond and the Highgate Men's Pond. The Corporation manages the heath. Sex Matters argues that the access rules breach the Equality Act 2010. The Corporation argues that its arrangements are lawful, and that it has balanced the interests of different groups of people who use the water. Both sides have indicated that they are likely to appeal if they lose. The question of how single-sex services should be provided is therefore more likely to be settled in the Court of Appeal than in this judgment, whenever it arrives.

What the court was actually asked

The Supreme Court has held that, for the Equality Act, sex means biological sex. The Hampstead case asks what that holding requires of a landowner that has long run a women's pond and a men's pond, and that has its own policy on who may enter each one. It is a judicial review of a policy, not a claim for damages, and it is not a criminal case. The judge does not have to design a new admissions rule. The judge has to decide whether the rule the Corporation is using is legal.

That limit matters. A reserved judgment is not a hint. It is the ordinary way a court deals with a dense statute and a contested policy. Until the reasons are published, swimmers use the ponds under the existing rules. The Corporation has not been ordered to change them. Sex Matters has not been granted the declaration it wants. The only certain outcome of the hearing is that the argument is now on the record.

One of several tests of how far a statute reaches

The ponds case sits in a year when Parliament and the courts have been asked, repeatedly, to say how far a written rule goes once it leaves the page. Ministers are drafting a law for live facial recognition, with a watchdog that could block a force. A celebrity's attempt to injunct reporting of sexual misconduct claims failed this week, with anonymity held for an appeal and reasons due by 4.30pm on Monday. The Ofcom fight with Meta, X and TikTok has already produced a judgment. The heath is a smaller stage. The statute is the same kind of problem: an Act that names a protected characteristic, and a public body that has to apply it to a real gate, a real pond and a real queue.

Whatever the High Court writes, the parties have already pointed to the next court. Readers who want a result this week will not get one from this case. They will get a date, later, and then very probably a notice of appeal. The rules at the water stay as they are until a judge says otherwise.