The Welsh Gender Service has cancelled all gender-affirming surgeries for patients on the NHS with immediate effect, according to QueerAF and What The Trans!?
This includes pre-operative assessments and scheduled surgeries. Some trans patients received this news just days or even hours before their procedures, as revealed in NHS correspondence sent to them.
While I don’t have precise figures for the number of Welsh Gender Service (WGS) patients scheduled for gender-affirming surgery, hundreds will be immediately affected. Last year, nearly 1,500 people were waiting for their first appointment at the WGS.
This pause on surgeries follows calls earlier this year from Welsh Conservatives for a review of the WGS. These calls were reportedly prompted by claims in a blog article by an gender critical independent journalist, which were later repeated in The Times last weekend.
Trans healthcare in Wales is provided by NHS Wales through the WGS, based at St David’s Hospital in Cardiff. The WGS handles first appointments and then patients are seen by a network of clinicians forming local gender hubs.
As of March 2025, 1,439 people were waiting for a first appointment at the WGS. As reported in the Gender Clinic Files last year, the waiting time for a first appointment with the WGS is two years.
The cancellation of gender-affirming surgeries follows Natasha Asghar, the Welsh Conservatives’ health spokesperson at the Senedd, writing in June to Mabon ap Gwynfor, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care. She requested an independent review of the WGS.
Asghar mentioned reading a “extremely concerning news article” about the WGS.
She expressed her concern and called for a closer inspection, asking Gwynfor to commit to launching a full independent review of the service’s practices and leadership as soon as possible. Asghar’s letter was reported in Nation Cymru.
Asghar was referring to a blog post by gender-critical freelance journalist Nick Wallis published on 23 May.
Wallis raised concerns based on Freedom of Information responses, alleging a lack of data on hormone replacement therapy prescriptions. His blog also examined data showing the WGS refers people for “irreversible gender surgeries” at a rate he claims is three to four times higher than the UK average. Furthermore, the WGS was referred for an independent review in 2024 that has yet to begin.
On 20 August, Nation Cymru reported that a meeting of the Quality Safety and Outcomes Sub-Committee at NHS Wales on 24 August would discuss the WGS. The meeting agenda described it as “currently under consideration as a potential Service of Concern”.
The agenda outlined concerns including higher surgical referral rates than comparable services and concerns about referral appropriateness.
The meeting agenda noted that given the significance of these emerging concerns, enhanced governance and oversight arrangements are being considered ahead of the completion of the independent review of adult gender services in Wales.
Then, on 22 August, Wallis wrote an article for The Times titled “Another Tavistock scandal is brewing in Wales”.
Five days later, trans patients began receiving phone calls informing them that their surgeries had been cancelled.
In a statement published late on Friday, the Cardiff and Vale University Health Board confirmed the cancellations while a “independent clinical review” was underway. They acknowledged the potential concern for patients, their families, staff and the wider community and expressed their commitment to providing clear, factual and timely information about the situation and available support.
The Welsh GIS is one of the best in the country, with one of the lowest waiting times. Comparing it to the English one’s is simply not fair to the people waiting for treatment in Wales. Leeds GIS, the one I am with and one of 2 in the North of England, has 7,025 people waiting for the first appointment at the time of writing this blog.
I would like to do an example here of what has just happened to people who had there operations cancelled. If you was waiting for a knee replacement or hip replacement and it just got cancelled for no good reason, how would you feel?
For context the regret rate for a knee or hip replacement in the UK is about 10%. The regret rate for gender affirming operations is 1%.
People may see this example as well you don’t need gender affirming operations to live. I would counter with this. Plastic surgery has the highest regret rate of any operation you can have. You don’t need that to live yet that happens on the NHS.
This is yet another attack on one of the most venerable communities in the country.
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