Certain Employees now have the legal right to request to work flexible hours – these are:
- Employees with children under the age of seventeen
- Employees with disabled children under the age of eighteen
- Employees who care for certain adults aged 18 or over.
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 with regards to:
- 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)
- 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 eighteen (whether an able-bodied or disabled child) and have or expect to have responsibility for their upbringing
- 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 eighteenth birthday.
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 (aged 18 or over) 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 re-organise work amongst 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.
Direct.Gov have a summary of the steps in this process.
For more information see our guide on the Rights of Part-Time Workers.
The right to request time off for Training or Study
Certain employees have this right. 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 time off
- Only apply for time off for Training or Study once in every 12 months (although your Employer can consider more frequent requests they have no statutory obligation to do so).
- Work for an organisation with 250+ employees
The (legal) request for time off must be for Training or Study
- That has the purpose of improving your effectiveness in your Employer’s business, or
- Improving the performance of your Employers business.
Update July 2011: The Government have confirmed that they will not extend the right for employees to make requests to train or study, if they work for an Employer who has less than 250 employees, until at least April 2015. (This right was to be extended to this group in April 2011 but was postponed).
The Training or Study can be provided by your Employer or by an external provider and can take place at any time and can be supervised or unsupervised. The training or study does not need to lead to a qualification.
The request must be made in writing, including details of the subject matter of the training, where and when it will take place, who will provide it and if it will lead to any qualification. 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.
Your request can be refused if -
- The proposed study or training would not improve your effectiveness or the performance of the employer’s business.
- Additional costs will be incurred.
- It will have a detrimental effect on the ability to meet customer demand or quality or performance.
- There is an inability to reorganise work among existing staff or recruit additional staff will be required.
- There is insufficient work during the period the employee proposes to work.
- It is incompatible with planned structural changes.
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.
After the meeting your employer needs to let you know their decision, in writing, within 14 days. If they refuse your request they need to explain why (from the reasons above) and notify of your right to appeal. If they agree, your Employer needs to confirm in writing the details and set out any changes to your working hours.
If you are unhappy with your employer’s decision you can appeal against it, within 14 days of receipt of the decision. An appeal meeting must be held and the Employer must notify you of the appeal decision, in writing, within 14 days of the meeting.
If your request is refused again at appeal – your Employer should write to you to explain the grounds and reasons for refusal – 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.
You can bring a claim to an Employment tribunal
- If your Employer fails to follow procedural requirements
- If the refusal was based on incorrect facts
- With a complaint in relation to the reason for the refusal – but only after an appeal has been heard
If a Tribunal upholds your claim it can order an Employer to reconsider the request and can make an award to you of compensation of up to 8 weeks pay (subject to the statutory limits of a weeks pay).
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.
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Funkdooby –
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