The Gender Recognition Act 2004

This page summarises general legal information relating to the rights of transgender and/or non-binary individuals under the law in England, Scotland and Wales. This information represents our understanding of these rights at the time of publication of this information. It is not intended to give specific legal advice on which you should rely. If you require legal advice, or further details on any matter referred to, please consult an independent legal professional.

What is the Gender Recognition Act?

The Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA) is the Act of Parliament which sets out how trans people in the UK may legally “acquire” the legal sex of “male” or “female”. Non-binary is currently not a recognised legal sex in the UK.

The change is facilitated through a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), a document confirming an individual has met the criteria for legally changing the sex recorded on their birth certificate.

What do I need a GRC for?

There is a lot you can do without a GRC and most trans people do not have one (a total of 8,464 full certificates had been granted in the UK up to the end of March 2024, according to the latest available figures from the Ministry of Justice.)

However, if you want to be able to do any of the following, you do need a GRC:

  • acquire a re-issued birth certificate with a different binary sex marker to that on your original birth certificate
  • update your gender marker with HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions
  • have the correct gender on marriage/civil partnership certificates
  • be protected by section 22 of the GRA which makes it a criminal offence for a “person who has acquired protected information in an official capacity” to disclose someone’s gender history without their permission (together with a few exceptions).

As well as this, having a GRC may:

  • affect your rights around pensions, particularly if you were born before 6th December 1953
  • affect the status of your marriage or civil partnership

What can I do without a GRC?

You do not currently need a GRC to update your gender marker on your:

  • passport
  • driving licence
  • medical records
  • bank and building society accounts
  • account details with most other organisations

To find out more about changing your name and gender marker on records, you can read:

How do I get a GRC?

There are detailed instructions on applying for a Gender Recognition Certificate on the gov.uk website.

Who can get a GRC?

A mix of legal and medical criteria must be satisfied. Briefly, an application will be granted where the person:

  1. has or has had gender dysphoria
  2. has lived in the acquired gender throughout the period of two years
  3. intends to continue to live in the acquired gender until death
  4. and complies with other evidential and medical requirements. 

There is no requirement for an individual to have undergone surgery or other gender reassignment treatment before acquiring a GRC. 

If granted, details will be entered on the Gender Recognition Register and then you can, if you wish, obtain a new birth certificate stating your acquired legal sex.

How does the Gender Recognition Act relate to the Equality Act?

The GRA is about a trans person’s legal status of sex/gender.

The Equality Act 2010 protects people who are “proposing to undergo, are undergoing, or have undergone a process to change their sex” (the protected characteristic of, ‘gender reassignment’) from unlawful discrimination. Importantly, you do not need a GRC, surgery or hormones to be protected.

Someone with a GRC will generally have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment’ under the Equality Act, but it also protects those who don’t have a GRC.

In For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16, the Supreme Court decided that a person with a GRC whose acquired gender is female, is not a ‘woman’ for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 and that ‘sex’ in that Act means biological sex. Whether s9(1) GRA 2004 applies will therefore depend on the relevant legislation.

It is perhaps more accurate to say therefore that, in practice, when a full GRC is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes, for most legal purposes, that of their “acquired gender”.

What do we think is wrong with the UK’s Gender Recognition Act?

We think the Gender Recognition Act is in need of reform to bring it into line with international best practice. In our view, the current process:

  • does not comply with United Nations Human Rights Commission guidance – see the next section for more details of their recommendations
  • is overly complicated and bureaucratic – for example:
    • it requires someone to “live” in their gender for at least 2 years
    • it requires medical reports and in our view pathologises trans identities
    • it depends on a panel of strangers deciding a trans person’s identity for them
  • it doesn’t offer legal recognition to trans people aged under 18
  • it doesn’t offer legal recognition to non-binary people
  • requires married trans people to get permission from their spouse

The current process also leaves people in a legal grey area where their documents can be contradictory. For example, people could be recorded in some documents as non-binary, some documents as male, and some documents as female.

What is international best practice in gender recognition?

In 2018, the UN stated that gender recognition “processes should:

(i) Be based on self-determination by the applicant;

(ii) Be a simple administrative process;

(iii) Be confidential;

(iv) Be based solely on the free and informed consent of the applicant without requirements such as medical and/or psychological or other certifications that could be unreasonable or pathologizing;

(v) Acknowledge and recognize non-binary identities, such as gender identities that are neither “man” nor “woman” and offer a multiplicity of gender marker options;

(vi) Be accessible and, to the extent possible, cost-free;

(e) Examine seemingly neutral requirements that are prerequisites for change of name, legal sex or gender for potential or actual disproportionate effects in the light of the realities of the trans populations in each given context.”

You can find detailed information about legal recognition of gender in other countries on the ILGA Europe Rainbow Map and the ILGA World Database.

Countries listed by ILGA as offering trans people self-determination for the purposes of achieving legal gender recognition include:

  • Argentina
  • Belgium
  • Colombia
  • Denmark
  • Finland
  • Germany
  • Iceland
  • Ireland
  • India
  • Malta
  • Norway
  • Portugal
  • Switzerland
  • Uruguay

Some areas of Canada and Spain also allow this.

Countries listed by ILGA as offering legal recognition to people who don’t identify as male or female include :

  • Germany
  • Iceland
  • India
  • Malta

This includes non-binary people, but may also include people that identify in a different way which may be culturally specific.

Non-binary people are also offered legal recognition in some parts of Australia and Canada.

How could the Gender Recognition Act be improved?

We think the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) needs to be reformed to:

  • make the process straight forward and easy to understand
  • allow for a statutory declaration without a need for medical reports
  • offer legal recognition for under 18s
  • offer legal recognition for non-binary people
  • make the process quicker – 2 years is too long

What have the government said about GRA reform?

On 22 September 2020, the UK government announced its proposed GRA reforms for England and Wales, following the publications of the results of a 2018 public consultation.

On 4 May 2021, the application fee was reduced from £140 to £5, and made it so that people can apply for GRC online rather than having to do it by post.

The current (2025) UK government have promised further reform of the Gender Recognition Act, however they had indicated that they would retain the requirement for a ‘diagnosis’ and a doctor’s report and have not indicated that they would remove the spousal veto or offer recognition to non-binary people or under 18s.

In Scotland, a consultation led to the Scottish Parliament to pass The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. This would have provided trans people in Scotland with a de-medicalised process of changing their legal sex. However, the Westminster Government blocked the bill using their powers under section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998.

Read TransActual’s full statement on the 2020 government announcement on GRA reform.

Read TransActual’s full statement on the blocking of the Scottish GRR bill by the Westminster Government, and the subsequent court case.

Read more:

TRANS RIGHTS IN UK LAW MENU

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