I have worked for the same large public body (not nhs) for 12 years, on a fairly senior technical post. Due to recent restructuring, I am on my 6th line manager in as many months. All have been internal assignments, all have been people with equally long, or longer, lengths of service.
For the last 14 months I have worked Tue-Fri (family commitments), having stepped up from Tue-Thur before my dc were both at school. Prior to that I was full time. No one has ever complained about my hours, or my ability to do my job.
My most recent line manager has requested that I am in the office on Fridays (it is a mixed field/site/Office role) as he likes to work at home on Fridays for religious reasons (o get this) - but also he does not want me to take any annual leave on Fridays. I am the next most senior person in the team to him (by a long way) , and he wants someone present to address by issues arising. I return he’ll cover anything I need covering on s Monday (virtually nothing, my colleagues and suppliers etc are used to my working pattern).
This is playing havoc with covering school holidays, inset days etc! DH works away too much to reliably cover school holidays - he will, but we’ll only know a couple of weeks in advance if he can - no local family, rural holiday club only covers some of the holidays and not insets.
Can my line manager actually specify that I (and only I) can not take leave on a particular day of the week? There is no organisational policy on this and he had not made a similar request of anyone else.