Ineligible for flexible working letter

An employee is ineligible to request flexible working if they’ve already made two statutory flexible working requests in the previous twelve months or they have a live request which is still in progress. Our letter confirms their ineligibility.

Eligibility criteria

Our Ineligible for Flexible Working Letter enables you to inform an employee that they’re ineligible to submit a request for flexible working once they’ve already purported to do so. An employee may be ineligible if either they’ve already made two previous statutory requests for flexible working in the past twelve months or they have a live request which is still proceeding. So, our letter covers both these alternative options.

Previous requests

As far as the previous requests ineligibility criterion is concerned, this only covers previous requests made under the statutory right to request flexible working; it doesn’t cover informal requests that might have been made and dealt with outside the statutory provisions. It does, however, cover earlier requests which were either subsequently voluntarily withdrawn by the employee, or which you treated as having been withdrawn in accordance with statutory provisions because of the employee’s conduct, i.e. because, without good reason, they failed to attend both the first meeting that you arranged to discuss their request and the next meeting that you arranged for that purpose, or because, without good reason, they failed to attend both the first meeting that you arranged to discuss their appeal and the next meeting arranged for that purpose. As for determining the twelve-month point, you need to look at the date when their previous applications were made, not the date on which their flexible working requests, or any appeals, were finally decided upon.

Live requests

As for the live request ineligibility criterion, once a request has been made it generally remains live until either you make a decision about it, it’s withdrawn, an outcome is mutually agreed or the two-month decision period for deciding requests ends. A request also continues to be live during any appeal or any extension of the two-month decision period that you may have agreed with the employee.

Re-submission entitlement

As the employee isn’t eligible to make a statutory flexible working request, their application doesn’t count as a request. This means they can simply re-submit it as soon as they do meet the eligibility criteria. Our letter therefore advises them of this. In practice, it means that you could see their application being re-submitted within a matter of weeks or even days, assuming their circumstances haven’t changed in the meantime.