Flexible working for carers in the UK: how to request it

Key Takeaways

Flexible working for carers is a day-one statutory request to change hours, start and finish times, days, or where you work. CIPD's 2025 survey found it is the support carers ask for most: 41%, ahead of paid leave at 25%.

A later start usually keeps more of the salary than dropping a day. It only holds if someone else is in the bathroom at 7.45.

Priya already has the 9.30

Priya is 43. Operations, a retailer in Croydon. Mum is 78, Thornton Heath, a 12-minute bus. The shower had become a 40-minute job.

She emailed HR on a Tuesday: statutory flexible working request, 9.30 to 5.30, Monday to Friday, start date three weeks out, no previous request. Nine days later they wrote back with a start date and a three-month review. Same salary. Same job title. The contract now says 9.30.

That is flexible working for carers when it lands. The useful part is which pattern to ask for, so you do not accidentally cut a day's pay.

What is a statutory flexible working request?

A statutory flexible working request is a written ask, from your first day in the job, to change your hours, the times you start and finish, the days you work, or where you work. GOV.UK calls it making a statutory application. Employees in England, Scotland and Wales can make two in any 12-month period. Northern Ireland has a different set of rules.

You do not have to say you are a carer. You do not have to explain how the change will affect the team. The Acas Code of Practice is the version a tribunal will look at. Your employer has to consult you before refusing, and decide, including any appeal, within two months unless you both agree to more time.

Part-time, hybrid, compressed hours, flexitime, a later start twice a week. All of those count. Informal "can I come in at 9.30 this Thursday" with your manager is not the statutory request. It also does not change the contract.

What the email actually has to say

GOV.UK is short on this. The letter must include:

• the date
• a statement that this is a statutory request for flexible working
• the change you want, and when you want it to start
• whether you have made a previous request, and the date if you have

Acas has a template if you would rather not invent the wording. Four lines is enough. You can add a reason. You do not have to.

If they agree, they should write down the new pattern and a start date, then update the contract within 28 days. You can only have one live statutory request at a time. Miss two meetings without a good reason and they can treat it as withdrawn, in writing.

Ask for the slot, not a smaller job

This is the bit people get wrong.

Dropping from five days to four is a flexible working request. So is starting at 9.30 instead of 9.00. Only one of those takes 20% off the salary, the pension match, and next year's bonus pool. The Health Foundation, using Understanding Society for 2023–25, put employment among working-age unpaid carers at 59%, against 67% for people who were not carers. That fell to 35% among people caring 35 hours a week or more. Hours are how the job quietly leaves.

A later start twice a week, or two afternoons at home for the GP and the chemist, is usually the version that keeps the grade. Compressed hours can work if Fridays are already quiet. Job-share and a four-day week without a pay cut are the ones CIPD found employees would use if they existed; 62% said compressed hours were not available in their role.

Jamal is 38. He leads a warehouse shift in Leeds. Dad is 81, Headingley, lunchtime tablets that now need prompting. Jamal asked for a compressed fortnight with alternate Fridays off. They refused it: customer demand, and they could not reorganise the Friday rota. They offered a trial of a 7am start on Tuesdays and Thursdays instead. He took the trial. It still leaves two lunch slots uncovered.

I do not know whether paid carer's leave will exist this Parliament. CIPD's summer 2026 member poll, of about 100 people professionals, found 91% would support up to five days of statutory paid leave. The government's Make Work Pay review closed on 1 September 2026 and is due to report in winter. The request you can send on Monday is still the flexible one.

The eight reasons they can say no

Employers must agree unless they have a genuine business reason. GOV.UK lists eight:

• extra costs that will damage the business
• the work cannot be reorganised among other staff
• people cannot be recruited to do the work
• it will affect quality
• it will affect performance
• the business will not meet customer demand
• there is not enough work at the times you want
• the business is planning changes to the workforce

"We prefer everyone in at 9" is not on the list. "Your mum" is not on the list. Consultation first, then one of those eight, in writing. Acas says they should also offer an appeal, even though the law does not require one.

A trial period is allowed. Take it if the alternative is a refusal. Write down the review date.

If the conversation itself is the hard part, talking to your employer about caring is the disclosure version. This page is the request.

Why so many people never send it

CIPD found three in ten employees would not feel comfortable requesting a formal change to their contract. 59% said they would. That has improved since 2023. On a warehouse rota, I would not bet on those odds.

Carers UK's State of Caring 2024, quoted in the May 2026 Tipping Point report, found 36% of carers did not know they could ask for flexible working from day one. The same report, drawing on Standard Life, found nearly two thirds of working carers would look for a new job if their employer limited flexible hours. Two in five said they would not have a job without it.

The Tipping Point also found 47% of working carers were considering cutting hours or leaving. 43% of those who had already left said their employer had no carer-support policies.

Unpaid carer's leave is still one week a year. Use it to sit in on a care needs assessment and meet two carers. Do not spend it being the 7.30 rota. If the money is already looking ugly, the cost of quitting work to care is the version with the calculator.

Remember Priya's 9.30? That was the cheap part.

Someone still had to be in Thornton Heath at 7.45. She used two days of unpaid carer's leave to meet a visiting carer for wash and breakfast, same person, Monday to Friday. The NHS still puts help at home from a paid carer at about £15 to £30 an hour. Ten weekday hours at £28 is about £14,560 a year. Hourly rates in 2026 wander by borough. That is usually less than going to 0.8.

The flex request moved the desk. The visiting hours moved the shower. She still does Sundays.

---

How Match with Care can help

A later start is easier to grant when the 7.45 slot already has a name on it.

Match with Care is a managed introductory care marketplace. We interview carers, check enhanced DBS, right to work, and references, then show you profiles so your parent can meet someone before they have a key. We are not a traditional domiciliary care agency, and we are not CQC-registered as a care provider. Introductory matching does not work that way.

What we can do is keep the first ask small: weekday mornings, or two lunchtime visits, often around 20 to 30 per cent below typical agency quotes, with a care advisor if the match is wrong. Hours go in the app. You get a weekly invoice. You send the four-line email with a rota behind it.

If you want to talk through the slot without putting your parent or your manager on the line, call +44 7962 657635 or email hello@matchwithcare.com.