The Right to Request flexible working was extended to all employees with 26 weeks continuous service at the time of the request.
The extension was delivered by the Coalition government in the Children and Families Act 2014. It removed the requirement that the application must be for the purpose of caring for a child or adult. The procedures for responding to a request were simplified, and the employer’s responsibility became to deal with the request in a reasonable manner. The eight business reasons, on which an employer could rely to justify refusal, remained.
The government committed to a statutory evaluation in 2019 of the extension of the Right to Request to all employees.