Equality law - Gyms, health clubs and sporting activity providers

Equality law applies to any business that provides goods, facilities or services to members of the public.

This includes sport and leisure related services, such as:

• leisure centres
• swimming pools
• tennis clubs and tennis courts
• golf clubs
• rugby, cricket and football clubs
• ice rinks
• riding schools and equestrian centres
• gyms
• health and fitness clubs
• rowing and sailing clubs
• adventure centres
• sporting venues.

It doesn't matter whether the service is free, for example, free swimming sessions in a swimming pool run on behalf of a local authority, or whether it must be paid for - it will still be covered by equality law.

Even though you may describe yourself as a 'club' (and many clubs are, in equality law, associations), you are really a service provider if you are offering a service to any member of the public, for example, by:

• charging them an entry fee to watch an activity
• allowing anyone to join your leisure club provided they pay for the service

even if the charge is described as a membership fee or if the service is free. If, for example, you allow a person to have a free trial session, you are still providing them with a service.

If you are not sure whether you are a service provider or an association, then ask yourself:

• Do you have more than 25 members and is membership regulated by rules - for example, do all the members have to decide who becomes a new member?

If the answer to this is 'yes', then you should read the guide on associations instead.

It is possible to be both an association and a service provider.

If you are both an association and a service provider, the question you need to think about is whether your services are provided to the public or to your members, associate members and their guests or people who want to become members or guests.

If it is the public, then this is the right guide for you to read.

If it is your members or their guests or people who want to become members or guests, you should read the guide on associations instead.

Particular issues for you to think about are:

• whether, if you want to, you can provide separate services for men and women or a service for only men or only women
• access to changing rooms and other facilities
• what you say about what people can or must wear to take part in your activities
• whether you can put conditions on who takes part in your activities, based on people's protected characteristics.

If you want to provide separate services for men and women or a single-sex service for men or women only, then you need to be able to objectively justify providing your service in this way. You must meet other conditions as well, such as showing that a joint service would be less effective, or that men's needs and women's needs are different. Read more about exceptions.

You can read more about this in Exceptions in equality law that apply to businesses.

You may need to make reasonable adjustments to make sure that disabled people are able to change in the same privacy and comfort as non-disabled people.

Obviously, sometimes you will require specialist or safety clothing or equipment to be worn by participants in your activities. If you make this a condition of participating in your activities, and a person says that they cannot comply with the condition because of a protected characteristic, and can show that the condition has a disproportionate impact on people who share that characteristic, you will need to objectively justify the condition you have put in place.

If it is necessary to change what a disabled person wears to take part in your activities, you need to consider whether making this change amounts to a reasonable adjustment. You can read more about reasonable adjustments.

• Health and safety and disabled people: Make sure that any action taken in relation to health or safety is proportionate to the risk. Disabled people are entitled to make the same choices and to take the same risks within the same limits as other people. Health and safety law does not require you as a service provider to remove all conceivable risk, but to ensure that risk is properly appreciated, understood and managed. Don't make assumptions; instead, assess the person’s situation, and consider reasonable adjustments to reduce any risks, your duty not to discriminate and, where appropriate, the disabled person's own views. There must be a balance between protecting against the risk and restricting disabled people from access to services.
• Health and safety and pregnancy: A service provider can refuse to provide a service to a pregnant woman, or set conditions on the service, because they reasonably believe that providing the service in the usual way would create a risk to the woman's health or safety, and they would do the same thing in relation to a person with a different physical condition.