An employer can refuse a flexible working request on only one of eight grounds set in law, and from 2027 will have to show the refusal itself was reasonable.
An employee sends an email asking to drop Fridays and work four days a week. They started the job three weeks ago. The employer wants to say no, worried the rota will not cover a Friday, and is not sure that reason is even allowed. It is allowed, within limits, and the limits have applied in the same form since 2014.
Since 6 April 2024 an employee can make that request from the first day of a job, with no minimum service required. The request has to be decided within two months, and refused on one of eight specific grounds or not at all. From a date set for autumn 2027, a further rule arrives: the ground alone will not be enough, and the employer will have to show the refusal was reasonable.
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Before 6 April 2024, an employee needed 26 weeks of service before making a statutory flexible working request. The Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023 removed that qualifying period. An employee can now ask on their first day in a job.
The same reforms raised the number of requests an employee can make from one to two in any 12-month period, and cut the time an employer has to decide from three months to two, including any appeal. An employer must consult the employee before refusing a request. A refusal issued without that conversation does not meet the legal process, even where the ground behind it would otherwise have held up.
An employer can refuse a flexible working request for one reason only: that it falls within one of eight grounds set out in the Employment Rights Act 1996. No other reason is lawful, whatever the circumstances.
These eight grounds have applied since the original Flexible Working Regulations in 2014, and the 2024 reforms left them unchanged. A refusal has to name one of them and explain, for this employee's request, why it applies. A line stating only that the request would not suit the business does not meet that bar on its own.
Say a six-person bakery gets a request from a new hire to compress five days into four and take Wednesdays off. The owner rotas two people on the counter every day the shop opens, and losing one person on a Wednesday without covering it would leave a single person serving the counter alone for three-hour stretches on the bakery's busiest trading day. That is a potential fit with ground six, the inability to meet customer demand, provided the owner can point to the actual rota gap and the trading figures behind it. A general sense that fewer days worked would be inconvenient is not enough on its own. The decision letter needs to set out the staffing gap and the ground it falls under. A bare refusal with no reasoning does not meet the process, whatever the merits of the underlying objection.
The employer has two months from the date the request arrives to give a decision, including any appeal the business offers internally. That clock can be extended only if the employee agrees to a longer period in writing. If the request is approved, the change to the contract has to be confirmed within 28 days of the decision, a separate deadline from the two-month decision window.
An employee can only have one live statutory request in progress with an employer at a time, even though two requests are allowed in any 12-month period. A second request has to wait until the first has been decided, withdrawn, or has run out its two-month window.
An employee who believes the process was not followed — no meeting took place before a refusal, or the decision named no ground at all — can bring a claim to an employment tribunal within three months of the decision. A tribunal that upholds the claim can order the employer to reconsider the request, and can award compensation of up to eight weeks' pay. A week's pay for this purpose is capped by law, and that cap rose to £751 from 6 April 2026 under the Employment Rights (Increase of Limits) Order 2026, so the maximum award for a bare procedural failure is £6,008.
That cap applies only to a breach of the flexible working procedure on its own. Where a refusal is bound up with a separate discrimination claim — an indirect sex discrimination claim over a request linked to childcare responsibilities, for example — the tribunal is not limited to the £6,008 figure and can award what it would for the discrimination claim itself.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 adds a further requirement on top of the eight grounds. From a date set for autumn 2027, an employer will have to show that refusing on a chosen ground was reasonable in the circumstances of this request, and set out that reasoning in the written decision.
Acas opened a consultation on a revised statutory Code of Practice on 1 October 2026, covering how the reasonableness test should work in practice; the consultation closes on 17 December 2026. Until the new law and the revised Code come into force, the Code of Practice on flexible working in use since April 2024 continues to apply.
Handling a flexible working request is an administrative employment process. It does not need a solicitor to complete. A free business legal review checks this policy alongside your other employment paperwork and contracts, with a fixed price for anything you decide to fix. The flexible working request response template sets out a written decision in the form the two-month deadline requires. Once a request is approved, contract documents are covered by the employment starter pack, from £895 +VAT.
From their first day in the job. Before 6 April 2024, an employee needed 26 weeks of service before making a statutory flexible working request; the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023 removed that qualifying period entirely. The request still has to meet the statutory form: in writing, dated, stating that it is a request made under the statutory right, saying what change is wanted and when the employee wants it to start, and saying whether the employee has made a previous statutory request and when. An informal conversation about working a different pattern does not count as a statutory request unless it meets those points, so an employer who wants the two-month clock and the eight grounds to apply should ask the employee to put it in writing in that form.
Two in any 12-month period, up from one before 6 April 2024. The two requests do not run at the same time: an employee can only have one live statutory request with an employer at any point, so a second request has to wait until the first has been decided, withdrawn, or has reached the end of its two-month window. If an employee makes a second request inside the same 12 months, the written request has to say so and give the date of the earlier one, which is one of the statutory requirements for a valid request. An employer is not obliged to consider a third request made within the same 12-month period.
Extra cost, the inability to reorganise work among existing staff, the inability to recruit to cover the gap, an effect on quality, an effect on performance, an inability to meet customer demand, a lack of work during the proposed hours, and a planned restructuring of the workforce. These eight grounds have applied since 2014 and were not changed by the 2024 reforms. An employer can rely on more than one at once, but a refusal has to name at least one of the eight specifically and explain how it applies to this employee's request. General reluctance to change a rota or a working pattern is not one of the eight and does not meet that bar on its own.
Two months from the date the request arrives, including the time taken for any appeal the employer offers. That period can only be extended if the employee agrees to a longer one in writing; an employer cannot extend it unilaterally by missing the deadline and deciding later. Before refusing, the employer has to discuss the request with the employee, usually in a meeting, and consider any alternative the employee raises in that discussion. If the request is approved, the resulting change to the employee's contract has to be confirmed in writing within 28 days of the decision, separate from the two-month decision window itself.
Bring a claim to an employment tribunal within three months of the decision. A tribunal that upholds the claim can order the employer to reconsider the request and can award compensation of up to eight weeks' pay, capped at a statutory week's pay figure that rose to £751 from 6 April 2026, making the maximum award £6,008. That cap applies only to a bare breach of the flexible working procedure. Where a refusal is also discriminatory, for example an indirect sex discrimination claim linked to childcare responsibilities, the tribunal can award what it would for that discrimination claim separately, without the £6,008 limit.
Employers will have to show that refusing a request was reasonable. Fitting one of the eight grounds will no longer be enough by itself. The Employment Rights Act 2025 adds that reasonableness test, due to take effect from a date set for autumn 2027, and a refusal will need to set out that reasoning in writing, beyond simply naming a ground. Acas is consulting on a revised statutory Code of Practice to go with the change; the consultation opened on 1 October 2026 and closes on 17 December 2026. Until the new law and Code are in force, the Code of Practice in use since April 2024 continues to apply.
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