More Flexible Working in the Pipeline

At present, parents with a child under 6 (18 if disabled) and carers of adults, have a statutory right to make a request for flexible working and employers are obliged to consider such requests seriously and may only reject them for clear business reasons.

The Government has announced that it will extend the right to request flexible working to those employees with parental responsibility for children up to the age of 16 years. It is likely to be in force from April 2009.

An additional 4.5 million parents are predicted to benefit from this change. Furthermore, many employers already extend this right to all their employees for fear of causing resentment among their workforce.

The Government also announced that it will legislate to extend the employment rights of temporary or agency workers; those workers often used by business to cover the gaps left by flexible working.