At present employees with 26 weeks continuous employment have a right to request flexible working arrangements to accommodate caring responsibilities for children aged up to 6 (18 where the child is disabled) or for adult relatives or adults who live at the same address as the employee.
With effect from 6 April 2009 the right to request flexible working is extended to parents of children who are aged 16 and under. The process for making and considering such requests remains unchanged.
Action required
Employers must give consideration to flexible working requests but are not obliged to agree to them. While there has been concern in some quarters that the increasing number of people eligible to make flexible working requests means that businesses that have reached saturation point will struggle to cope, provided that the correct process is followed when a flexible working request is made requests that would genuinely compromise legitimate business needs can be refused.
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