Flexible Working Requests: How to Handle Them Properly

A flexible working request lands in your inbox and the clock starts. You have two months to reach a final decision, you cannot refuse without consulting first, and you can only say no for one of eight specific reasons. Get the process wrong and you are exposed at tribunal. Get the process right but the conversation wrong and you often lose the person anyway.

This guide covers both halves: the statutory mechanics of handling a flexible working request, and what the request is actually telling you.

What counts as a flexible working request

A statutory flexible working request is a formal application to change where, when or how someone works. In practice that covers hours, start and finish times, working from home, compressed hours, job shares, term-time working and phased returns.

Three points employers still get wrong:

• It is a day-one right. Since April 2024 there is no qualifying service period. A new starter can submit a flexible working request in their first week.
• Two requests per 12 months. An employee can make two statutory requests in any rolling twelve-month period, not one.
• An informal ask is not a statutory request — until it is. If someone puts it in writing and states it is a statutory application, the clock is running whether you filed it or not.

Employees no longer have to explain what effect they think the change will have on the business, which was previously a requirement. The burden of working that out sits with you.

What the law requires when you receive a flexible working request

Four obligations, and the third is the one people miss.

1. Decide within two months. That two-month window covers the whole process including any appeal, not just the first answer. You can extend it, but only by agreement with the employee.
2. Handle it reasonably. The Acas Code of Practice sets the standard a tribunal will measure you against.
3. Consult before you refuse. You cannot reject a flexible working request without first discussing it with the employee and exploring alternatives. A refusal that arrives without a conversation is procedurally defective even if the underlying reason was sound.
4. Explain why the refusal is reasonable. Naming a statutory ground is not sufficient on its own. You need to show why it applies here.

The eight reasons you can refuse a flexible working request

The statutory grounds are exhaustive. If your reason is not on this list, it is not a lawful refusal.

• Extra costs that would damage the business
• The work cannot be reorganised among other staff
• People cannot be recruited to do the work
• The change would negatively affect quality
• The change would negatively affect performance
• The business would not be able to meet customer demand
• There is a lack of work during the proposed working times
• The business is planning changes to the workforce

Two of these — quality and performance — get used far more often than the evidence supports. If you refuse a flexible working request on performance grounds, be prepared to say what you are measuring and what it shows. “We think people work better in the office” is a belief. A tribunal will ask for the working.

Watch the discrimination overlay too. Requests connected to childcare, disability or religious observance carry indirect discrimination risk that runs alongside the flexible working regime and is not capped in the same way. A technically correct refusal can still be an unlawful one.

Handling a flexible working request, step by step

1. Acknowledge in writing and date it. The two-month clock runs from receipt, not from when someone noticed.
2. Meet, even if you intend to say yes. The meeting is where the workable version of the arrangement gets found.
3. Explore alternatives properly. Three days at home refused; two days offered. A different start time instead of a shorter week. Document what you considered, not just what you decided.
4. Consider a trial period. Underused, and the single most effective way to resolve a request where the honest answer is “we don’t know if it would work”.
5. Confirm in writing. If accepted, note that it is a permanent contractual change unless you have expressly agreed otherwise. If refused, state the statutory ground and the reasoning behind it.
6. Offer an appeal. Not strictly required by statute, but the Acas Code expects it and it keeps you inside the two months.

What changes in 2027

The Employment Rights Act 2025 strengthens the consultation requirement. The current law says you must consult before refusing but says almost nothing about what consultation means, and that vagueness is being closed. Further flexible working entitlements are expected in 2027, subject to consultation.

Employers who already run a genuine consultation will barely notice. Employers whose “consultation” is a ten-minute call confirming a decision already made will find that harder to defend. Our guide to the Employment Rights Bill sets out the full implementation timeline.

The part the process misses

Handled as pure compliance, a flexible working request is an administrative task with a deadline. Handled properly, it is one of the clearest signals you will ever get about someone’s life and their intention to stay in it.

People rarely submit a formal request as a first move. By the time it is in writing they have usually thought about it for months, discussed it at home, and considered what they would do if the answer is no. A refusal does not return you to the status quo — it returns you to an employee who now knows the answer.

Which is why a spike in flexible working requests from one team is worth reading as data rather than workload. It usually means something about that team’s hours, commute expectations or manager has changed. If the only way you find that out is through formal applications, you are learning it at the most expensive possible moment — a pattern we see repeatedly in the run-up to resignations.

Continuous listening catches the same signal earlier and far more cheaply. Someone flagging that their workload no longer fits around their caring responsibilities is telling you the same thing as a formal request, three months sooner, at a point where the range of possible answers is much wider.

That is what wotter does. Our continuous surveys ask small, frequent questions rather than one annual set, so a change in someone’s circumstances reaches you as a signal you can act on rather than as a formal flexible working request you have two months to answer.

Getting the detail right

The statutory position is set out on GOV.UK, and the Acas Code of Practice on requests for flexible working is the document a tribunal will hold you to. Read the Code rather than a summary of it — it is short, and the expectations around consultation and appeals are more demanding than most policies assume.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. For a specific request, particularly one with a discrimination dimension, take proper advice before you refuse.