Help - flexible working denied and previous verbal agreement revoked

[saffacirce]

Hi,
I'm sure this has been discussed before but I'm not finding much info.
I've been employed as a fulltime employee with my company for over five years. In the 2H2012 I moved up North and had a verbal agreement with my manager that I could WFH fulltime and come into the office twice a month. In April 2013 I went on maternity leave and I'm due to return back to work fulltime in May 2014. We've also moved to Surrey.

On grounds of our Flexible Working policy I've requested being allowed to work part time / job share. This has been denied as HR and manager claim the job can't be shared (which I disagree). They also say they aren't allowed additional headcount (despite the job being shared).

I've also been informed I now need to be in the office 3 days a week and that it's nicer being able to chat with someone face to face.
It's impossible for me to commute 90min, work a full day, commute 90 min back home and be in time for the nursery before it closes. I can't afford a nanny or additional childminder in addition to the nursery fees I'll be paying. I also don't have any friends / family / support structure to rely on to babysit my son so if something happened during my commute I wouldn't be able to fetch him from nursery in time.

Do I have to accept their decision or do I have any other options? I'm mindful that I need to start work within a month and I can't agree to their proposed terms as they are.

Thank you in advance!

Have you got a union. I'm sure that if you worked a certain pattern for over a year ie mon to fri from home then it becomes your contracted working pattern. You would be best ringing acas to confirm this though

If your after ways to possiblly make their demands work, a couple of thoughts:
Could babies father do a nursery pick up/drop off on the 3 days your needed in the office?
Could the office days be short working days, and you make the hours up on the other days?
Could baby go to a nursery near work, and commute with you?

There is somewhere (and I've seen it linked on MN before) a list of reasons why reduced hours can be rejected. Can yuo try and find that?
There is also a procedure for officially requesting reduced hrs - have you followed that? in which case you have a short time to make an appeal (7 days from the decision?)

FWIW, my request for reduced hrs was rejected. I decided to stick with full hrs (but the commute is much less, making nursery hours posisble), rather than rock the boat putting in an appeal. I've since got a new job with a much more understanding boss, so for example while I'm officially in the office 5 days a week, when the kids had chicken pox, I did a mixture of working from home and holiday to cover it, rather than all leave. i also think the current senior manager may be much more ameniable to reduced / flexi hours if i was to apply again (unfortunatly the new job would be much harder to do on reduced hours).