The Brighton clinic that defied the puberty-blockers ban

The publication of an NHS investigation into a GP clinic in Brighton deserves to be a watershed moment in the never-ending scandal of so-called gender medicine.

The findings, published last month, concern the WellBN practice – and they are excoriating. According to the investigation, 78 young people and children – some as young as 12 – at the clinic’s ‘Trans Health Hub’ were given puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones from January 2023 to December last year. In 22 cases, gender treatment was given to patients without even a face-to-face consultation. Disturbingly, the report found that 53 of the 78 patients might have had neurodevelopmental issues. The NHS guidance formulated in the wake of the Cass Review says that puberty blockers should never be prescribed, outside of a clinical trial. As of March 2026, NHS England no longer prescribes cross-sex hormones to under-18s, and has never recommended prescribing them to anyone under-16.

Yet perhaps the most striking aspect of this scandal is not what happened inside a Brighton GP practice. It is how many people knew enough to raise concerns long before the NHS finally acted. According to the report, NHS Sussex was aware something was amiss at WellBN as early as September 2024.

In fact, authorities should have acted even sooner. Last year, Hannah Barnes wrote in the New Statesman that the General Medical Council and NHS England had concerns over WellBN going back to 2019. Barnes wrote that, if the investigation ultimately concluded there had been malpractice, ‘none of the organisations responsible for protecting these young people and ensuring they receive safe care will be able to say it could not have been prevented’. Now, the NHS has confirmed that those warnings deserved to be taken seriously all along.

One of the most revealing details concerns WellBN’s use of an ‘informed consent’ model. Under this approach, the patient – usually a minor – is treated as the expert on themselves. Legitimate mental-health assessments are sidelined. The role of the clinician becomes less about investigation and diagnosis, and more about facilitating the patient’s stated wishes.

It is this kind of lax thinking that has characterised so much of the trans debate in Britain. Traditionally, adults had responsibilities precisely because children were not expected to navigate every complex question alone. This was particularly the case when it came to medically ‘transitioning’, which involves medication and sometimes surgery that will carry lifelong consequences for those who choose to undergo it.

Parents, teachers and doctors were expected to exercise judgment, ask questions and sometimes challenge assumptions. In the gender-identity field, however, questioning increasingly came to be regarded as harmful. Affirmation was seen as kindness, while scepticism was seen as suspicion.

The result was not merely a lack of scrutiny. It was a culture in which scrutiny itself became suspect. Brighton offers perhaps the clearest example of this.

Long before the NHS investigation into WellBN, parents had raised concerns about local gender-identity practices in the area. Some alleged that schools were facilitating the social transitioning of children – that is, letting them adopt the pronouns, dress code and a name fitting the opposite sex – without any parental involvement. Others questioned the influence of activist organisations working in schools. Some warned about pathways that appeared to steer vulnerable children towards medicalisation.

Whatever anyone thought about those concerns, they were plainly safeguarding questions that deserved to be examined. Instead, critics often found themselves represented as the problem. In 2023, Labour councillor Bella Sankey accused local parents of spreading ‘baseless smears’ when they were concerned about the fact that their daughter’s school had allowed her to use chestbinders without their permission.

This pattern has become familiar across Britain. Institutions increasingly retreat behind process, guidance and procedure. Questions are acknowledged but never really answered. Concerns are noted but never seriously investigated. The appearance of engagement replaces the reality of scrutiny.

One parent quoted by Barnes captured the problem with WellBN perfectly: ‘The tragedy isn’t that nobody knew. The warnings were known, the prescribing was celebrated, and institutional curiosity went missing precisely when it was needed most.’

That observation should trouble anyone concerned with safeguarding. Because the real lesson of WellBN is not that there was too little compassion. If anything, everyone involved believed they were acting compassionately.

Many questions remain. The NHS report tells us what happened at one GP practice. It does not tell us how so many children arrived there. It does not explain the role played by schools, local authorities or activist groups. It does not explain why so many adults acted like rabbits in the headlights, frozen in fear, seemingly unable to ask obvious questions.

The WellBN scandal should prompt a reckoning not only with one clinic, but also with an entire institutional culture. A culture in which scepticism was treated as hostility, parental concerns were too easily dismissed, and curiosity itself became something to tiptoe around.

The children at the centre of this story deserved better than. Some of them – now adults with profound medical problems – are likely to ask why on Earth their schools sent them along a classroom-to-clinic pathway.

They deserved adults willing to ask difficult questions before the harm was done. They deserved a system that prioritised the interests of children and young people, instead of the interests of trans activists. They deserved so much better.