Letter rescheduling flexible working request meeting

If you need to postpone an arranged meeting to discuss an employee’s flexible working request, or if you’re consenting to an employee’s request to postpone it, you can use our letter.

Statutory requirements

Where an employee applies for flexible working, the legislation provides that you’re then required to deal with their application in a reasonable manner and notify them of your decision on it within a period of two months of receipt, and this includes dealing with any appeal (unless you agree with the employee to extend this decision period).

Acas Code of Practice

The statutory Acas Code of Practice on requests for flexible working will also be taken into account by employment tribunals in deciding relevant cases. This says that once you receive a written flexible working request from an employee, you should invite the employee to a consultation meeting to discuss the request - see our Flexible Working Request - Invitation to Meeting. The Code also says that it’s good practice to allow the employee to be accompanied by a work colleague, trade union representative or trade union official at this meeting, although this isn’t a statutory right. However, a meeting isn’t needed if you simply intend to agree to the employee’s request in full.

Postponement

Assuming you’ve arranged a meeting, you might subsequently find that it needs to be postponed. In this situation, you can use our Letter Rescheduling Flexible Working Request Meeting. It covers two alternative postponement circumstances. The first is where you need to postpone the meeting due to unforeseen business circumstances. Our letter sets out a new date and time for the meeting, states that its purpose is still to discuss the employee’s flexible working request and confirms that postponement won’t affect the conduct of the meeting or its outcome. However, don’t postpone the meeting to a date that’s too far in the future – you only have a two-month decision period, unless the employee agrees otherwise. The second circumstance is where the meeting is postponed at the employee’s request, for example, if they’re genuinely ill or on annual leave. It’s advisable to allow a postponement here if their reasons seem valid and genuine.

Decision period extension

In some circumstances, postponement of the meeting may mean you need to seek the employee’s consent to extend the two-month decision period. Use our Extension of Flexible Working Decision Period letter for this; it’s best not to seek an extension retrospectively though as the employee might not agree to your request.