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Informal/pre-existing flexitime/banked hours scheme

Sharon Long

some of the team have been running a flexi-time/banked hours scheme without their current manager knowing. It was approved by a former manager over 3 years ago and not communicated during handover. The team are never asked to work over and above their hours but chose to do so and then bank their hours for a Friday pm for example.

We have a separate TOIL policy and if they are asked to do an event in an evening or weekend, then they can claim Toil.  This is followed by the whole business, but the flexitime scheme is used by 3 members of staff, the current manager doesn't sign off flexi-time and it is not one of our policies.

The manager now wants to stop the scheme as there is no business need for it, would custom and practice come into this as a former manager informally agreed it.  There is no written approval.

If so, I presume we would need to consult (the contracts give the right to change terms).

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  • If your contracts list their hours and you are choosing to now enforce their hours, this is low risk. Custom and practice is quite challenging to prove in a way that overrides explicit contractual clauses.

    If that's the case, I would avoid a formal consultation as that is likely to muddy the waters.

    Be prepared for several flexible working requests to come in and be clear on what the legal options for rejecting these are. I would look at this with the manager before making any changes - what problem is the manager trying to solve? Why are they unhappy with the current arrangement?

    At a guess, the working hours are likely not the problem.

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  • If your contracts list their hours and you are choosing to now enforce their hours, this is low risk. Custom and practice is quite challenging to prove in a way that overrides explicit contractual clauses.

    If that's the case, I would avoid a formal consultation as that is likely to muddy the waters.

    Be prepared for several flexible working requests to come in and be clear on what the legal options for rejecting these are. I would look at this with the manager before making any changes - what problem is the manager trying to solve? Why are they unhappy with the current arrangement?

    At a guess, the working hours are likely not the problem.

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