The statutory scheme gives employees a right to request a change to their hours, times or place of work, and binds the employer to a process for answering. It does not give a right to the change itself, and an employer who follows the process may refuse.
What the right consists of
- · It is a day-one right. gov.uk: “Employees can make a request for flexible working from their first day in a job.” The previous 26-week qualifying period is gone.
- · An employee may make two statutory requests in any 12-month period.
- · The employer must decide and communicate the outcome within two months of receiving the request, including any appeal. That period can be extended if both sides agree.
- · The employer must not reject a request without first consulting the employee — the Acas statutory Code is explicit, and expects a meeting unless the request is being granted in full.
- · A refusal must rest on one or more of eight statutory business reasons, below.
The eight permitted reasons for refusal
This list is closed. A refusal has to sit inside it, quoted here as the Acas Code states them:
- · the burden of additional costs
- · an inability to reorganise work amongst existing staff
- · an inability to recruit additional staff
- · a detrimental impact on quality
- · a detrimental impact on performance
- · a detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand
- · insufficient work available for the periods the employee proposes to work
- · planned structural changes to the employer’s business
The Code is a statutory Code of Practice, which means an employment tribunal must take it into account where it is relevant to a question before it.
Changes are scheduled, and the timing is not yet fixed
The Employment Rights Act 2025 alters this scheme further, and the government’s published timeline places flexible working changes in 2027 without a confirmed date — the related guaranteed-hours and reasonable-notice measures are marked “timings will be updated after consultation”. What is on this page is the position as it stands. We have set out the wider timetable on what changed and what changes next.
What senior adverts disclose
A request is a conversation after you are hired. Before that, the only signal is the advert — so here is what the 1,898 roles on this board say today.
1,069 state a working pattern, all of them public-sector posts, and 414 of those name something beyond plain full-time (38.7%). All 829 private-sector listings state nothing.
- · Part time — 322 listings
- · Flexible working — 189 listings
- · Job-share — 49 listings
- · Compressed hours — 11 listings
- · Home or remote working — 8 listings
- · Annualised hours — 4 listings
- · Term time hours — 2 listings
A listing can name several patterns, so these do not sum to the total. The asymmetry between the two halves is partly a fact about the sources rather than about the employers — NHS Jobs publishes a structured field and the applicant-tracking systems have no equivalent, so the private-sector answer is missing rather than withheld. That distinction matters and is set out in full on your hours at £100,000.
Sources
The law on this page was last read against the primary sources on 6 October 2026. The listing figures recompute on every build. Legislation changes; if you are reading this much later, check the source.
- · gov.uk — Flexible working
- · Acas — statutory Code of Practice on requests for flexible working
- · Employment Rights Act 1996, Part 8A — flexible working
- · gov.uk — Plan to Make Work Pay and Employment Rights Act: timeline update
- · Working-pattern figures: this board’s own listings, recounted on each build