to expect my colleague's Year 7 twins to be able to get the bus to school?

[MaryQueenOfSpots]

One of my colleagues has just moved house and the twin children are still at their previous school which is a 30 minute bus ride from the new house. Colleague has requested change of hours to accommodate driving children to school in the morning as "they are too young to take the bus". Colleague's DP works irregular shifts so cannot be depended upon for this.

It will affect the rest of the team because the colleague will not be able to attend the daily ward meeting at 8, so cover will need to be found. This is not impossible, but will not be as good as current situation. Continuity will be lost and junior unqualified staff will need to go instead of qualified colleague. There is likely to be some grumbling by another colleague who also has Year 7. child but allows them to make their own way to school. At the same time, other colleagues have had flexible arrangements made when returning from mat leave.

I am a very inexperienced team leader trying to sort out what is fair? Is it really unacceptable for 11 year olds to take a bus to school? I did when I was that age, but that was back in the dark ages...

Of course uou can implement a change then review it.

Mine would all make their own way at that age. I couldn't take them even if I wanted to as have younger DC at a different school at the same time in different directions. However many of DC friends give them a lift all the way through high school. Not sure whether it is because it is a fair walk (not over 1.5 miles though) or because they are overprotective. I think many people just become used to driving and ferrying their kids around. I tend to walk about half the time so my DC are used to walking and forced to be more independent.

Firstly, the reasons for him making the request are absolutely none of your business, other than (assuming you are the decision maker) making sure the reasons are relating to his children.

Your organisation will have a flexible working policy, so follow it appropriately and make a decision which relates only to whether the request can be accommodated, not to how justified you think he is in making it

Secondly, I would very strongly recommend getting this thread deleted. It's appalling for a manager to be asking on the internet about whether a bunch of randoms think an employees flexible working request is justified. It's pretty identifiable and in the employee's situation I would be very upset at my team leader doing that.

By all means ask in Employment about the procedure, but discussing the ins and outs of a request made by one of your team and whether it's justified is seriously out of line imo.

Firstly I noticed the colleague asking for the flexibility is a man. Secondly, the OP should not be taking any account of his children in her decision on whether to allow flexible working or not. Valid reasons for refusal will be business reasons only, not whether this chap's DCs can get themselves to school alone or not.

I worked with someone who had all of the school hols off. All of them. Goodness knows how she managed it (AL wouldn't cover August let alone Easter and Christmas) but she did. None of the other team members had children or partners who worked in schools, so nobody cared.

But by the time her daughter was 15 (15!) the team had changed. There were a couple of parents of younger children and a chap whose wife is a teacher. Yet she still insisted that it was her "right" to take the entire school holidays off.

I know that had management got any teeth they'd have addressed the matter, but it would have been a lot easier had the term time working only pattern been reviewed annually from the outset. It was never an official alternative working pattern, but having done it for 10 years she wsasn't about to relinquish it the cow.

Yanbu, my dd turns 11 next year and when she starts high school that september i shall take her on her first day and after that she will be making her own way there on foot or by bus if she doesn't get into local school.
Although the world is full of things to worry about, i would say at 11 you have to let go somewhat especially if you have work commitments or other smaller children that need collecting from school.
Maybe there are other reasons as to why she has changed her hours, remember you have to factor in her being there for when the twins arrive home etc.

Jenai if she'd been working term time for 10 years then those were her terms and conditions and she was correct to say she had the right to continue. Changing someone's terms and conditions isn't easy, and 'reviewing' it annually wouldn't make a difference if every year it had continued.

Jenai, if it was in her contract from the outset that she didn't work school holidays, then no one has a right to expect her to change for their convenience. Presumably the new team members discussed the hours before signing their own contracts.

If it wasn't part of her contract then any other employee could presumably have put their holiday request in and challenged her. The boss would then have had to be fair.

Why on earth would you relinquish working hours that suit you?

And presuambly if she works term time only she gets paid term time only

She was employed on the same terms as everyone else - there was nothing to relinquish other than her "entitlement" (in the MN meaning of the word!). The issue was that it had gone on for so long as an unofficial arrangement that she expected it, and sod everyone else. And the management were scared of her

As I said, if she'd been doing term time consistently for 10 years, those were her terms, regardless of what her contract originally said, so she was entitled to continue in the legal sense, not the MN sense.

It wasn't official term time working. Nobody would have had a problem with that. As the nature of the job changed though it would have meant that it was unreasonable for the person doing that job to be off for 6 weeks in a row as a matter of course. Had the arrangement been official, she could have transferred to another department.

The leave would have been a combination of TOIL (which she accrued by being officially PT but working FT hours) and annual leave.

Wel tbh that sounds frauduoant to me. Very bad management

Doesn't matter how it was structured in terms of leave, TOIL or whatever. If she'd been doing it consistently for 10 years then it was just as "official" as if it has been written into her contract.

Really flowery? My dh puts his christmas leave sheet in in january to have most of december off (he does his share of christmas cover ). Hes do e it about six years now. So can he assune he can always have those weeks off now?

Surely it will just be till the end of term anyway, ie 6 weeks? Then they'll be at their new school?

Can't you just be nice? You said yourself it won't have that much effect on the others, whereas you making her life hard because you decide to make judgements about her parenting or decisions will make her miserable in her job, and that will have an effect.

Oh I'm quite sure it was at least a bit fraudulent, SPB. I am no longer there, thank goodness - the management were useless buggers.

No, putting in a request for the same holiday time off wouldn't become a contractual entitlement in the same way. Jenai's colleague wasn't just taking annual leave on the same days though, she was only working term time consistently for a significant period of time - whether it was partly annual leave, partly TOIL, partly unpaid leave, partly parental leave or whatever, there was a consistent expectation on both sides that she would not be working during school holidays.

If she was working part time hours over the year, organised as full time term times and holidays off, and had been doing so for 10 years, then that was her working arrangement and why should she voluntarily relinquish it?

Because it no longer worked for the business or for anyone else, that's why.

It was OK in the days when work quietened down over August and when everyone else was childfree. But requirements evolve and other people's lives change.

It is unreasonable to expect everyone else to shell out for holiday childcare or forego a holiday with their partner because one person has claimed first dibs on all the school holidays.

Basically, it was badly managed. The T&Cs state quite clearly that staff can reasonably request up to two weeks AL in a row - any longer can be granted but is exceptional. The timing of that AL must fit into business needs, too.

I wonder if she's still doing it - her daughter must be about 18 now

If management agreed to a different working pattern for her over a long period of time, and didn't see fit to try to alter it, not sure why she shouldn't be expected to disadvantage herself. I wouldn't.

But without that formally agreed surely she was just getting holiday sheets signed off in the usual way??

Out of curiosity would that work the other way too? So if she tried to drop dowm to her PT hours again, or start working again in the holidays, they could say no?
This is fascinating stuff!