Time off for medical and dental appointments letter

If an employee requests to take time off work to attend a medical or other health-related appointment, our letter can be used to deal with their request for time off.

Legal position

Employees have no general statutory right to take time off work to attend medical and other health-related appointments, nor to be paid their normal salary if time off is granted. These are matters for your discretion. However, note that special rules apply to antenatal appointments and to accompanying a pregnant woman to antenatal appointments. In the former case, pregnant employees have the right to take reasonable paid time off work to attend antenatal care that’s recommended by a registered medical practitioner, midwife or nurse – see our Response to Antenatal Appointment Request. In the latter case, an employee who is the spouse/civil partner of a pregnant woman, or the partner of a pregnant woman who lives with them in an enduring family relationship (but not their relative), or who is the father of their expected child, is entitled to take unpaid time off work to accompany the pregnant woman to an antenatal appointment made on the advice of a registered medical practitioner, midwife or nurse. This is limited to a maximum of two occasions, with each occasion lasting no more than 6.5 hours – see our Response to Antenatal Appointment Companion Request. Finally, if the employee is disabled, time off for necessary medical appointments related to their disability is likely to fall within your statutory duty to make reasonable adjustments.

Policy provisions

If an employee requests time off work for a medical appointment, the starting point is to check the terms of your relevant policies. Our Medical and Dental Appointments Policy and Leaves of Absence Policy both encourage staff to arrange medical appointments for outside their normal hours of work but acknowledge that this isn’t always going to be possible. Where it’s not possible, the policies state that you’ll permit employees to take reasonable time off work for such appointments, provided they’ve been authorised in advance by their line managers and (unless there are exceptional circumstances) subject to a maximum of two hours per appointment. However, we’ve also reserved the right to ask an employee to reschedule an appointment where the timing of it would have a detrimental effect on the business needs of their department.

Letter contents

Our Time Off for Medical and Dental Appointments Letter therefore has two options. The first option grants the time off under the terms of the above policies, and you can make this subject to their providing proof of the appointment if you wish. The second is to request the employee to reschedule their appointment. In the case of the first option, as our policies make payment for time off a matter for your absolute discretion, our letter repeats that. Do ensure though that you’re being reasonable and consistent here in exercising your discretion – set some internal guidance for payroll on when you’ll pay and when you won’t, e.g. you’ll pay for no more than two medical appointments per rolling year.