The Flexible Working (Eligibility, Complaints and Remedies) (Amendment) Regulations 2009 allow employees to request flexible working, “before the day on which the child concerned reaches the age of 17.” This is a significant extension of the current law which at present only allows requests to be made for children under the age of 6.

The law will remain unchanged in relation to disabled children, which allows employees to request flexible working in order to care for children who are under 18.

The new Regulations do not amend the statutory procedure for requesting flexible working, despite the possible administrative burden on smaller businesses. Employers should therefore continue to deal with requests as before, by following the statutory procedure. Upon receipt of a written request from an employee, the employer should deal with this in the usual way, i.e. hold a meeting with the employee within 28 days to discuss the request and provide the employee with a decision within 14 days of the meeting, setting out the appeal procedure.

Breach of the statutory procedures on requesting flexible working can still result in a maximum award of eight weeks pay, subject to the statutory cap of £350 per week.

It should be borne in mind of course that the right to request is only a right to request, not a right to be granted flexible working. A request by an employee for flexible working may still be rejected on one of eight statutory grounds, as follows:

• burden of additional costs;
• detrimental effect on the ability to meet customer demand;
• inability to reorganise work among existing staff;
• inability to recruit additional staff;
• detrimental impact on quality;
• detrimental impact on performance;
• insufficiency of work during the period that the employee proposes to work; or
• planned structural changes.

The current economic climate may mean that some businesses will in fact welcome the new Regulations, which may encourage employees to consider voluntarily reducing working hours.

For more information, please contact:

Lucy McLynn           l.mclynn@bwbllp.com        020 7551 7806
Joy Andrews           j.andrews@bwbllp.com      020 7551 7739
William Garnett      w.garnett@bwbllp.com       020 7551 7720
Martin Bunch         m.bunch@bwbllp.com         020 7551 7738
Philip Trott            p.trott@bwbllp.com           020 7551 7785
Paul Seath            p.seath@bwbllp.com          020 7551 7739
Louise McCartney   l.mccartney@bwbllp.com    020 7551 7738
Kathryn Lloyd        k.lloyd@bwbllp.com           020 7551 7806
Sarah Bull             s.bull@bwbllp.com             020 7551 7738
John Curran           j.curran@bwbllp.com         020 7551 7799
Victoria Cook         v.cook@bwbllp.com           020 7551 7856

Disclaimer
The information contained with this e-bulletin is necessarily of a general nature. Specific advice should always be sought for specific situations.