Your right to request flexible working

Can you ask for flexible working?

Yes, from day one. You don’t need years of service, and you don’t need a reason connected to childcare, health, or anything else.

You can ask your employer to change your hours, the times you work, or where you work between home and their premises. That covers shorter hours, flexitime, compressed hours, job sharing, part-time work, self-rostering, or working from home some or all of the time.

You can only have one request in progress at a time, and you can’t make more than two in any 12-month period.

How to make a request

Put it in writing. State that it’s a request to change your terms and conditions to work flexibly. Set out exactly what you’re asking for and when you want it to start. Say whether you’ve made a request before, and when. Date it.

Use our flexible working letter generator to put your request in writing, ready to send.

What your employer has to do

The law says your employer has to deal with your request in a reasonable manner. That means talking to you about it, unless they’re simply going to agree in full. It means letting you bring a colleague or union rep to any discussion. It means discussing the request in private, whether in person, by video, or by phone. And it means giving you a decision in writing within two months of your application, unless you agree to a longer period.

The Acas code of practiceOfficial guidance issued by ACAS on how disciplinary and grievance procedures should be run. It is not law, but tribunals take it into account, and a failure to follow it can result in any award being... on flexible working also says employers should let you appeal a refusal, even though this isn’t a strict legal requirement. Most do offer an appeal. It still has to be dealt with inside the same two-month window.

That window can be extended. Only if you agree to it in writing before it runs out. Turning up to a late appeal meeting isn’t enough on its own. One tribunal made this point directly: an employee’s willingness to attend a meeting after the deadline had passed didn’t count as agreeing to extend it (Walsh v Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd, Employment Appeal Tribunal, 2020). If your employer wants more time, they need your clear, written agreement before the clock runs out. Not after.

The only reasons they can say no

Your employer can refuse your request only on one of these grounds:

• the extra cost involved
• harm to the business’s ability to meet customer demand
• an inability to reorganise work among existing staff
• an inability to recruit additional staff
• harm to quality or performance
• not enough work during the hours you’re proposing
• planned structural changes to the business

That’s the full list. Nothing else counts. If the reason your employer gives doesn’t fit one of these categories, the refusal isn’t lawful.

When a refusal is more than a refusal

A flexible working refusal doesn’t have to be objectively justified beyond fitting one of these grounds. That doesn’t make every refusal safe. Turn down a request, or grant only part of it, in a way that treats someone unfairly because of their sex, disability, or another protected characteristicOne of the nine characteristics listed in the Equality Act 2010 against which it is unlawful to discriminate. They include age, disability, race, sex, religion or belief, and sexual orientation. If yo.... That’s a discrimination claim. A much stronger one.

This comes up most often for mothers returning from maternity leave. Women still carry most of the responsibility for childcare, and courts and tribunals recognise that. Refuse a flexible working requestA formal ask to change your hours, working pattern, or location, which every employee can make from day one of a job. An employer can only refuse it for one of eight specific business reasons set out ... without good reason, or grant only part of what was asked for, and that can amount to indirect sex discrimination (British Airways Plc v Starmer, Employment Appeal Tribunal, 2005).

See our guide on what counts as indirect discrimination at work for the full test, and what the law protects if you’ve been treated unfairly because of pregnancy or maternity.

Disability works the same way, through a different route. Disability triggers a separate duty on your employer: to make reasonable adjustmentsChanges an employer must make under the Equality Act 2010 for a disabled employee, where without them the employee would be at a substantial disadvantage compared to non-disabled colleagues. What coun.... Altering your hours, or letting you work from home, can count as one. Refuse a flexible working request that would have removed a disadvantage linked to your disability, and that can be a failure of that duty, separate from and on top of any flexible working claim.

For the full test, see our guide on the duty to make reasonable adjustments. One tribunal found exactly this: changing someone’s hours without letting them challenge it was disability discrimination.

Use our discrimination diagnostic to work out whether this looks like discrimination, and which type.

If you think the process was handled badly

You can complain to an employment tribunalAn independent court that hears disputes between employees and employers. It is free to bring a claim as a claimant, and most hearings take place in public. if your employer:

• didn’t deal with your request in a reasonable manner
• didn’t consult you before rejecting it
• missed the two-month deadline, or the agreed extension
• refused you for a reason outside the permitted list
• based their decision on facts that were wrong
• wrongly treated your request as withdrawn

A tribunal will check whether the facts your employer relied on were actually correct. It won’t second-guess whether their underlying business decision was the right one. Two tribunal cases confirm this: get the facts right, and the tribunal won’t overturn a business decision just because you disagree with it (Commotion Ltd v Rutty, Employment Appeal Tribunal, 2006; Singh v Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, Employment Appeal Tribunal, 2016).

Say your employer claims there wasn’t enough work in your proposed hours. If that’s untrue, you have a strong complaint. If it’s true, the tribunal won’t overturn their judgment, however much you disagree with it.

Win, and a tribunal can order your employer to reconsider your application and pay compensation, capped at eight weeks’ pay at the statutory maximum, £751 a week from 6 April 2026. That’s a maximum of £6,008.

Arbitration as an alternative

You and your employer can agree to send a flexible working dispute to an AcasThe Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. A public body that provides free, impartial guidance on workplace rights and disputes, and runs the mandatory early conciliation process before any ... arbitrator instead of tribunal, but only if you both want to, and only within three monthsThe standard time limit for bringing most employment tribunal claims, running from the date of the act complained of. Because the limit is three months less one day, you should not wait until what fee... of the alleged breach. Choosing arbitration means giving up your right to bring the same claim to tribunal afterwards. Whatever the arbitrator decides is final.

What’s changing

The Employment Rights Act 2025 will tighten the refusal test. Employers will still refuse on one of the same grounds. But they’ll also have to show the refusal was reasonable, not just tick a box. They’ll need to state the ground they’re relying on, and explain why refusing was reasonable in your specific case. The government expects this to come into force in 2027.

If your request is with your employer now, that change won’t help you yet, but it shows where things are headed: away from a tick-box refusal, towards employers actually having to justify saying no.