UK Managers Will Have to Explain a 'No' to Flexible Working

Posted on in Management

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For UK managers, the quick email reply of "sorry, that won't work for the team" may be on its way out. Speaking to the Trades Union Congress in Brighton on 15 September 2026, First Secretary of State Louise Haigh announced that the government "will strengthen the right to flexible working."

Under the proposal, an employer that wants to turn down a request will have to sit down with the employee, consider the request properly and explain the reasons for refusing it. Haigh also drew a line around expectations: every request can and should be taken seriously, she said, but not every request can be agreed.

What changes, and what does not

The proposal is about how refusals are handled, not about when refusal is allowed. It is worth separating the facts from some of the louder headlines:

  • The speech does not create a right to work from home.
  • The statutory business grounds that employers already use to refuse requests are not being changed.
  • The existing right already requires consultation before a refusal and a decision within two months.
  • No commencement date or legislative vehicle was given in the speech.

Some coverage suggested that employers would lose the ability to refuse home working altogether. The official text does not support that reading. Reports that the change would come through the Employment Rights Act 2025 and start "next year" relied on unnamed officials, and neither detail appears in the published speech, so waiting for draft regulations is the sensible course.

A management skill, not just a legal one

Even without a date, the direction matters for anyone who leads a team. If refusals must be discussed face to face and justified, line managers will need to know the business reasons behind their team's working patterns and be able to state them clearly. That is less a compliance chore than a test of whether the manager actually understands how the work gets done. The managers who already treat flexible working conversations as real conversations will barely notice the change; the ones who relied on a polite one-line "no" will need a slightly longer script.

Source: First Secretary of State Louise Haigh's speech to the Trade Union Congress 2026