Belfast City Council restricts prime rental site to pro-trans tenants

Applicants for a prominent and iconic city centre rental must be ‘LGBT compliant’, local government officials have said.

Belfast City Council said plans are “in progress” to house a new taxpayer-funded “LGBTQIA+ Hub” on the first floor at 2 Royal Avenue. In February, the Council called for “expressions of interest” to rent ground floor space in the same Grade B+ Listed Building.

Alongside requirements such as the need to be “public facing” and “financially sustainable”, proposals for long-term use “should be complementary and compatible with the LGBTQIA+ Hub”.

‘Ideological conditions’

In a statement to the Belfast News Letter, the Women’s Rights Network NI said the pro-LGBT terms of rental amounted to “attaching ideological conditions to the use of a public building”.

Lord Young of Acton, founder and Director of Free Speech Union, warned: “If Belfast Council is granting LGBTQIA+ activists a veto over what groups are allowed to use the ground floor, that is a clear breach of section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998”.

The Act, he explained, “imposes a duty on public authorities not to discriminate against service users on the basis of their protected religious and philosophical beliefs, which includes the view that transwomen aren’t women and marriage should be between a man and a woman”.

“If a Christian group applies to use the ground floor and is vetoed by the woke groups on the first floor, it would have a slam dunk legal case for unlawful discrimination.”

Millions

Last year, Belfast City Council was accused of attempting to hide the fact that it may cost millions of pounds to create its ‘LGBTQIA+ hub’.

The Belfast News Letter used a Freedom of Information request to obtain the feasibility study for the proposal.

The Council attempted to redact the hub’s estimated cost claiming it would “prejudice the commercial interests of the council”. But the figures, which were still visible, indicated the price “could range from £0.5m to £10m”, followed by an ongoing annual subsidy of £70,000.

The hub has been commissioned by the Council in collaboration with controversial activist organisations, including The Rainbow Project and Transgender NI.