Certain Employees now have the legal right to request to work flexible hours – these are:

• Employees with children under the age of  sixteen (from 6th April 2009), or
• Employees with disabled children under the age of eighteen or
• From April 2007, employees who care for certain adults

If you do not fit into any of these categories, your employer still may be prepared to consider you working flexibly, although they have no legal responsibility to do so.

The (legal) request to work flexibly can be about:

• hours of work (you may want to work flexi-time or do term-time working)
• times of work (shorter or different starting/ending times of work) or
• place of work (you may want to work from home).

The request must be made in writing and your employer has a legal duty to consider your request seriously; but your request can be refused if there are clear business reasons why they cannot accommodate your desired work pattern.

If your request is approved this is a permanent change and you have no automatic right to change back to your previous pattern of work (unless a trial period or specified time period is agreed).

To be eligible to apply you must:

• be an employee (not an agency worker or self-employed)
• have worked with your employer continuously for 26 weeks at the date you apply for flexible working
• only apply to work flexibly once in every 12 months

and as a parent you must:

• have a child under sixteen or a disabled child under 18 and have or expect to have responsibility for their upbringing and
• be either the child’s mother, father, adopter, guardian or foster parent or be married to, or the partner of, any of the above
• apply no later than two weeks before the child’s sixteenth birthday (or 18th birthday if a disabled child)

and as a carer of an adult who are in need of care you must:

be or expect to be caring for a spouse, partner, civil partner or relative, or if not any of these, you must live at the same address as the adult in need of care.

More information -

After you have made a request your employer needs to meet with you within 28 days (unless they agree to your request without needing a meeting).  You can be accompanied to the meeting by a work colleague or Trade Union official if you wish.

After the meeting your employer needs to let you know their decision within 14 days.  If they refuse your request they need to explain why (reasons to refuse your request that are legally acceptable are – additional costs; detrimental impact on their ability to meet customer demand; quality or performance; inability to reorganise work among existing staff or the need to recruit additional staff; planned structural changes).

If you are unhappy with your employer’s decision you can appeal against it.

If your request is refused again at appeal you should discuss the matter informally and/or contact your Trade Union official if you are a member and/or use your employers grievance procedure, before finally complaining to an Employment Tribunal.

A summary of the steps in this process can be found at http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/employment/employees/WorkingHoursAndTimeOff/DG_10029491

See more information on the rights of part-time workers here.

Image by Monkey Magic

If you work in the UK Media Industries and have a question about this or any other topic, please e-mail us at workline@freelanceadvisor.co.uk

Please note that the advice given on this website and by our Advisors is guidance only and cannot be taken as an authoritative interpretation of the law. It can also not be seen as specific advice for individual cases. Please also note that there are differences in legislation in Northern Ireland.