Flexible Working Request Refused: What You Can Do

If your flexible working request has been refused, the first thing worth knowing is that your employer was not free to simply say no. Since 6 April 2024, requesting flexible working has been a day-one right, and a refusal is only lawful if your employer followed the process in sections 80F to 80I of the Employment Rights Act 1996 and relied on one or more of eight specific business grounds. Many refusals fall short of that standard. This guide covers what a valid request looks like, what your employer had to do, what a weak refusal looks like, and your options now - from an internal appeal through to an employment tribunal claim.

One honest caveat up front: this is a right to request, not a right to have. A tribunal does not decide whether your employer's business judgment was correct. It decides whether the process and the stated grounds met the statutory requirements - and, separately, whether the refusal discriminates against you.

What is the statutory right to request flexible working?

Under section 80F of the Employment Rights Act 1996, as amended by the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023, any employee can ask to change their hours, their working times, or their place of work (including hybrid and home working). Key features of the scheme since 6 April 2024:

• It applies from day one of employment - the old 26-week qualifying period is gone
• You can make up to 2 requests in any 12 months
• You no longer have to explain what effect the change would have on your employer or how it could be dealt with - that burden has moved to the employer's side of the table
• The request must be a statutory request to trigger these protections (see below)

GOV.UK summarises the scheme on its flexible working page, and the ACAS Code of Practice on requests for flexible working sets out how a reasonable employer handles one. Tribunals take the Code into account.

What makes a valid request?

A statutory request is simple, but it has to tick the boxes in section 80F. It must:

1. Be in writing and dated
2. State that it is a statutory flexible working request
3. Specify the change you are asking for and the date you want it to start
4. State whether you have made a previous statutory request, and when

If your request did not say it was a statutory request, your employer may treat it as informal - which means the duties below were never triggered. If that is your situation, you may want to consider submitting a fresh, clearly statutory request before relying on the enforcement options in this guide.

What did your employer have to do?

Once a valid request is in, section 80G imposes three duties:

• Deal with the request reasonably. The ACAS Code fleshes this out: discuss the request with you, consider it genuinely, and allow you to be accompanied at meetings as good practice.
• Consult you before refusing. Since April 2024 an employer cannot lawfully reject a request without first consulting the employee. A refusal letter that arrives out of the blue, with no meeting or discussion, is a strong sign the scheme was breached.
• Decide within 2 months. The whole process, including any appeal, must be completed within 2 months of the request, unless you agree to extend the period. Silence past the deadline is itself a breach.

A refusal is only lawful if it is based on one or more of the eight statutory grounds.

The eight statutory refusal grounds

Section 80G(1)(b) lists the only permitted reasons for refusal. In plain English:

The grounds are broad, and the tribunal does not second-guess the business judgment behind them. But the refusal must genuinely be based on facts - an employer who relies on a ground that is factually wrong, or who never honestly considered the request, is in breach.

What does a weak refusal look like?

In practice, refusals tend to fail in recognisable ways:

• No ground stated at all - "it wouldn't work for the team" is not one of the eight grounds
• A ground asserted with no explanation - copying the statutory wording with nothing behind it
• No consultation - the decision was made before anyone spoke to you
• Blanket policy reasoning - "we don't do part-time in this role" or "everyone must be in the office", applied without considering your actual request
• Missed deadline - the decision (or the appeal outcome) arrived more than 2 months after the request without your agreement to extend
• A refusal contradicted by reality - the ground is "inability to reorganise work", but a colleague already works the pattern you asked for, or you worked it successfully during a trial period

Keep the paper trail: your request, the refusal letter, meeting notes, and anything showing the stated ground does not hold up.

What can you do after a refusal?

Work through the options in order. Escalating early rarely helps; skipping steps can hurt.

1. Appeal internally. The ACAS Code treats an appeal as good practice, and many refusals are softened or reversed at this stage - often into a trial period or a compromise pattern. Put your appeal in writing and address the stated ground directly.
2. Raise a grievance if the appeal fails and you believe the process or the reasoning was flawed. A grievance creates a formal record that a tribunal will later expect to see. Our guide on how to write a grievance letter covers structure and tone.
3. Contact ACAS. Before any tribunal claim you must start ACAS Early Conciliation - it is free, it is confidential, and it pauses the tribunal clock. Many flexible working disputes settle here.
4. Bring a tribunal claim under section 80H for breach of the statutory scheme - for example, refusal on a ground not in the list, a decision based on incorrect facts, no consultation, or a missed 2-month deadline.

If the claim succeeds, the tribunal can order your employer to reconsider the request and award compensation of up to 8 weeks' pay. A week's pay is capped - £751 as of April 2026 - so the maximum award is £6,008. That is a modest remedy, which is exactly why the discrimination angle below matters.

Could the refusal be discrimination?

This is often the stronger claim. A refusal that is lawful under the flexible working scheme can still be indirect discrimination under the Equality Act 2010 if a neutral-looking rule puts a protected group at a particular disadvantage and cannot be objectively justified. Two patterns come up constantly:

• Childcare and sex. Tribunals have long accepted that rigid full-time or fixed-hours requirements disadvantage women, who still carry the majority of childcare responsibility. A refusal to adjust hours for childcare may be indirectly discriminatory unless the employer can justify it.
• Disability. If you asked for the change because of a disability, the request may also engage the employer's separate duty to make reasonable adjustments - a stronger duty than anything in the flexible working scheme.

Discrimination compensation is uncapped and includes injury to feelings. The tests, the comparators and the justification defence are covered in our workplace discrimination guide - if your refusal has a childcare or disability dimension, read it before deciding which claim to pursue.

Can you be punished for asking?

No - and this protection has no qualifying period. Dismissing you because you made, or proposed to make, a statutory flexible working request is automatically unfair under section 104C of the Employment Rights Act 1996. Subjecting you to a detriment short of dismissal - worse shifts, withdrawn opportunities, hostility - because you asked is also unlawful under section 47E. If things deteriorated sharply after your request, date and document everything.

Deadlines

The tribunal time limit for a flexible working claim is 3 months less 1 day, generally running from the date of the breach - typically the refusal, the failed appeal, or the expiry of the 2-month decision period. In practice, missing the deadline almost always bars the claim. You must start ACAS Early Conciliation before claiming, and doing so pauses the clock. The interaction between the two is easy to get wrong, so check your dates with our tribunal deadline calculator and read the employment tribunal deadlines guide for how the extension works.

Key takeaway

A refused flexible working request is not necessarily the end of the road. Check the refusal against the eight statutory grounds, check whether you were consulted and answered within 2 months, and check whether the refusal lands harder on you because of childcare or disability. Appeal first, document everything, and keep one eye on the 3-months-less-1-day clock - everything else can be worked out after the deadline is protected.