Can I say no to a flexible working request?

Alan Creevy, Founder · 29th October 2026

Yes. You can, and plenty of refusals are lawful. But the place where employers lose these is rarely the decision itself. It is how the decision was reached and what the letter said. Refuse on a sound business reason without consulting the employee first and you have broken the rule even though your reason was good.

So the useful question is not whether you can say no. It is what you have to show afterwards.

The eight reasons are the whole list

A refusal has to rest on one or more of eight business grounds, set out in section 80G of the Employment Rights Act 1996: the burden of additional costs, a detrimental effect on your ability to meet customer demand, an inability to reorganise work among existing staff, an inability to recruit more staff, a detrimental impact on quality, a detrimental impact on performance, not enough work in the periods the employee wants to work, and planned structural changes.

If none of them genuinely applies, Acas puts it bluntly: “you must agree to it”. That is worth sitting with, because the reason owner managers reach for first is usually not on the list. “Everyone else will want the same” is not a ground, nor is “it would set a precedent”, nor “I would rather have people in the office”. The real worry can sometimes be expressed as one of the eight, usually an inability to reorganise work or an effect on customer demand, but only if that is honestly what is going on. Picking the closest sounding label for a decision made on instinct is what gets unpicked later.

There is no qualifying service, so an employee can ask from their first day, and they can make two requests in any twelve months.

You have two months, and the appeal is inside it

Acas is clear that you must make a final decision, including any appeal, within two months of the request. You can agree a longer period with the employee, but you have to agree it, not assume it.

That sounds generous and it is not, because a meeting, a decision, a letter, an appeal and a second letter all have to fit inside it. Diary the dates the day the request arrives. Missing the deadline is itself a failure to handle the request properly, whatever you would have decided.

You cannot refuse without talking to them first

This is the trap, and it has been law since 6th April 2024. Paragraph 12 of the Acas Code of Practice on requests for flexible working says “Employers must not reject a request without first consulting the employee”, and that the employer should invite them to a consultation meeting.

A phone call telling them the answer is not consultation. The meeting has to happen before you decide, and its point is to find out whether some version of the request would work. Paragraph 17 asks you to discuss modifications to the request, and says a trial period may help assess whether an arrangement is feasible. Paragraph 32 says you should let them bring a colleague or union representative where that request is reasonable, though there is no statutory right to be accompanied.

Then put the refusal in writing, state which ground you rely on, and give as much relevant information as you reasonably can about how you reached it: what you looked at, what you tried, what alternatives you considered. Offer an appeal and say how long they have to take it up. There is no statutory right of appeal, but paragraph 25 expects the written decision to make the option clear, and an appeal is your cheapest chance to fix a costly decision.

The flexible working claim is small. The one sitting next to it is not.

Here is the arithmetic. If an employee wins, the tribunal can declare the complaint well founded, order you to reconsider, and award up to eight weeks’ pay, with a week’s pay capped at £751 since 6th April 2026 under section 227. So the worst case is roughly six thousand pounds, and the grounds of complaint are narrow: that you did not handle the request in accordance with section 80G, that your decision rested on incorrect facts, or that you wrongly treated the request as withdrawn.

That middle ground deserves attention. The grounds do not include that your business judgement was a poor one, but a tribunal can look at whether the facts underneath your reason were right. “We cannot cover Fridays” collapses if the rota shows two others already working Fridays.

The real exposure is elsewhere. Working patterns are classic territory for discrimination. Acas’s own example is a father refused a later start for the school run because his employer thinks childcare matters less to men, which it calls likely to be direct discrimination. A blanket rule about hours can also be indirect discrimination under section 19 of the Equality Act 2010 where it puts people who share a protected characteristic at a particular disadvantage, unless you can show it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

Where the person has a disability, Acas lists flexible working among the changes that can be a reasonable adjustment. That is a separate duty, and refusing on a lawful ground does not answer it, so treat a request from someone with a health condition as an adjustments question too, as you would when someone has been off sick and you are working out what you can change. Discrimination awards are uncapped. The flexible working claim is the one you can afford.

Say yes to a trial, not to a permanent change

A trial of three months is often the better answer, because it tests the business reason instead of asserting it. If the arrangement genuinely does not work, you then have evidence rather than a prediction.

Be precise about what you are agreeing. An accepted request changes the contract, and Acas says arrangements can be changed later as long as both the employer and employee agree. So unless you both write down that it is a trial and when it ends, you cannot simply put the hours back, because changing a contract is not something you can do alone. One line saying the change is a trial, giving the end date and confirming the old terms return unless you agree otherwise, is the difference.

What changes in October 2027, and why it matters now

The Employment Rights Act 2025 rewrites the refusal test. Under the new wording in section 9, an employer will be able to refuse only on a listed ground and only where it is reasonable to refuse on that ground, and the refusal will have to explain why. Acas expects this in October 2027.

Note what is not changing. The eight grounds stay, and regulations can add to them. You may read that the list is being narrowed or replaced. It is not. What arrives is a second hurdle on top of the ground. Section 9 came into force in January 2026 only for the purpose of making regulations, so it does not yet bite.

That is no reason to relax. Write refusal letters now as though the test were live, because a letter explaining why refusing is reasonable is also one that survives a discrimination claim today. Acas is consulting on a revised Code to match, closing on 17th December 2026.

What to do this week

If a request is on your desk, diary the two month deadline and book the meeting before you form a view. Go in looking for the version that works: fewer days, different days, a later start, a trial. If you still refuse, name the ground, show your working, offer the appeal.

And if the honest answer is that you do not want this person on these hours, deal with that as the separate problem it is. Dismissing someone because they made a request is automatically unfair under section 104C, and section 108 lets them claim with no qualifying service at all. Where the reason really is something else, from 1st January 2027 an employee will need only six months’ service to bring an ordinary unfair dismissal claim, with no cap on the compensatory award. Here the cheap route and the lawful route are the same, so take it.

Tarn.hr provides HR guidance based on UK employment law and Acas codes of practice. It does not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Employment law is complex and turns on the facts of each case. For any situation involving significant legal risk, potential tribunal claims, or matters of particular sensitivity, you should seek advice from a qualified employment solicitor. Tarn.hr is not responsible for any decisions made on the basis of its guidance.