Annual leave - how long can they take to respond to a request?

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DP's request for annual leave seems to have been ignored. He asked a week ago. I need to get on with booking childcare over the summer or we'll be in the shit.

Is there a timescale by which employers need to respond to requests by?

Summer leave where I work was all allocated months ago. By now it would be unlikely for any more to be granted in the main periods.

Perhaps he already knows it has been rejected?

Some of the timescale really depends on how far away the leave is. Did he get any kind of response when he handed in the request? Is it a small or big company?

As starfish has said much of the main leave is already gone requested and approved months ago. I still have some slots, but accommodating the leave often requires personnel shuffling and needs the individual's agreement to that shuffle and that can take me a while to talk to them, they have to chekc diaries at home and come back to me.

Company should have a proper policy unless its a one man band, his dog and your DH.
He should be able to read this or contact his HR dept to ask. Has he asked his direct manager?

I checked my holiday policy and it states requests need a minimum of 30 days notice and time for response depends on the needs of the business.

It's a tiny company. A start-up business. No HR department. He may need to go away for the whole of August, they keep saying they'll let him know if he needs to go, but then they don't make up their minds. It's driving me demented. I can't book my leave until I know but they're keeping him dangling.

He's asked for a week in July, they haven't got back to him.

He asked his manager for a meeting, he agreed to meet tonight after work. DP booked a later train. Manager cancelled the meeting, DP can't change his ticket so will be left hanging round after work for no reason (he'll get home at nearly 1am and have to leave at 8am).

Sorry, to be clear, the company might ask him to go away for them for the whole of August.

There's no set timeframe a request has to be responded to by. Sometimes it's genuinely not possible to know whether a request could be agreed, depending on how far in advance the request is made, and on the nature of the business.

However if an employer wants to refuse a request, it needs to do so giving as much notice as the length of the request- so they'd need to give a week's notice to refuse a request for a week off.