Refusing a flexible working request: the reasonableness test

An employer may refuse a flexible working request only for one or more of eight statutory business grounds in section 80G of the Employment Rights Act 1996, and only after consulting the employee. The Employment Rights Act 2025 adds a second hurdle: the refusal must also be reasonable on that ground, and the employer must explain in writing why it is. That change follows in 2027, once regulations are made.

Where the law stands today

Since 6 April 2024 the request is a day-one right. An employee may make two requests in any 12 months, and the employer must consult before refusing and give a decision within two months of the request (extendable by agreement). There is no obligation to grant the request — only to handle it properly.

The eight grounds

A refusal must rest on at least one of these:

1. the burden of additional costs;
2. a detrimental effect on the ability to meet customer demand;
3. inability to reorganise work among existing staff;
4. inability to recruit additional staff;
5. a detrimental impact on quality;
6. a detrimental impact on performance;
7. insufficiency of work during the periods the employee proposes to work;
8. planned structural changes.

Anything else — "it isn't our culture", "it wouldn't be fair on the team", "the director prefers people in" — is not a ground, and dressing it as one is how these cases are lost.

What the Employment Rights Act 2025 adds

Two things:

• A reasonableness test. Citing a ground stops being enough. The question becomes whether it was reasonable to refuse on that ground, which a tribunal can examine on the facts: was the cost material to a business of this size, was a trial period considered, could the rota have absorbed the change?
• A written explanation. Where the employer rejects a request after consulting, it must set out why the refusal is reasonable — not merely which ground applies.

This does not turn flexible working into a right to be granted. It converts a formality into a decision that must survive being read aloud.

Handling a request so the refusal holds

1. Log the date. The two-month clock runs from the date of the request, and blowing it is the simplest way to lose.
2. Meet and consult. Explore variants — different days, reduced rather than compressed hours, a phased pattern. Consultation that considers no alternative is not consultation.
3. Offer a trial period where the concern is untested. A trial that fails is strong evidence; a refusal with no trial invites the tribunal to ask why not.
4. Pick the ground honestly and evidence it: the cost figure, the coverage gap, the customer commitment.
5. Write the decision out — ground, evidence, alternatives considered, why refusal is reasonable — and offer an appeal even though none is required by statute.

The discrimination risk sits alongside this

The flexible working regime carries a modest remedy: eight weeks' pay at the capped weekly rate, and tribunals do not order the arrangement into place. The real exposure is elsewhere. A refusal that disadvantages employees with childcare responsibilities can be indirect sex discrimination under the Equality Act 2010, and a refusal to adjust hours for a disabled employee can breach the duty to make reasonable adjustments — both uncapped, and both decided on whether the employer could justify the refusal. The reasonableness test in the 2025 Act moves the flexible working analysis closer to that standard.

Get it into the contract properly

An agreed change to hours or place of work is a permanent variation of contract unless the parties expressly agree a trial period — a point employers routinely forget when they say yes. Our guided UK employment contract sets out hours, place of work (office, hybrid or fully remote) and the variation mechanics as part of the statutory written statement, so an approved request can be recorded without leaving the contract contradicting the arrangement.

→ UK employment contract · written statement guide

Related: Employment Rights Act 2025 — what changes and when · unfair dismissal after six months.