Flexible working rights now apply to all qualifying employees.

With effect from 30 June 2014, The Children and Families Act 2014 extends the right to request flexible working to all employees. This right currently applies only to employees who have children under the age of 17 (18 if a child is disabled) or who are carers. This means that from the end of June any of your qualifying employees could make a flexible working request and Simply-docs has amended its Flexible Working Policy and collection of Flexible Working Letters to account for these changes.

To be able to qualify to make a flexible working request the employee must have been working for the business continuously for 26 weeks and an employee can only make one flexible working request in any 12 month period.

The main features of the new right to request a flexible pattern of work are:

• the right to request flexible working is extended to all employees (not just those with parental responsibility for a child, or caring responsibilities for an adult);
• the requirement for the employer to deal with the request in accordance with the statutory procedure is replaced with a requirement to "deal with the application in a reasonable manner"; and
• the employer is required to notify the employee of its decision within a "decision period" of three months of the application (or longer if this is agreed).

Simply-docs has updated the following flexible working documents:

• Flexible Working Policy
• Flexible Working Request Letter
• Flexible Working Request Acknowledgement Letter
• Flexible Working Decision Letter
• Flexible Working Rejection Letter
• Flexible Working Appeal Letter
• Flexible Working Appeal Decision Letter