illegal to work from home?

[Rachie97]

Hiya, my other half asked to work from home for a day so that he could look after the little one as I have an appointment to attend. he was told he could have the day as holiday or unpaid parental leave but that it is illegal to work from home if you are caring for a child. it's the first time i've heard of his can anyone shed any light please?

I'm not sure about illegal, but surely if he's looking after the children, then he can't be devoting his full attention to work.

TBH I think his employer is right. on the odd occasion when I work from home DD goes to nursery as normal.

I'm not sure if it's illegal or not, but tbh, if he was working from home then any employer would expect him to be working and not doing childcare. They would expect other childcare to be organised, and rightly so.
It sounds like he would be better off asking for a days leave.

If he was naive enough to actually say something like "I need to work from home for a day because I have to look after my small child" then no wonder the employer said no. What kind of paid work can you do whilst giving a small child your full attention ?

Think about it, honestly, the employer is quite right to say no.

if the reason is because he wouldn't be giving 100 % attention to work, then fine I understand that but that isn't the reason given,& I wondered because a lot of moms are encouraged to work from home in advertisements in baby magazines etc, so is it illegal?

I've never heard of it being illegal

However a company is responsible for your Health & Safety at work - even if the work place is your own home - so maybe that's the angle they were coming from. A lot of companies will insist on a health & safety risk assessment to allow people to work from home, especially if it's not just a one-off.

There are also other issues such as insurance, phone/broadband, council tax etc to consider.

However not surprised they said no if your DH was actually going to be looking after your LO rather than working - otherwise it would xset a precedent for others to do the same.

So its ok to sit on here whilst caring for a young child but you cant sit on the pc doing work?

I don't have a problem with him having to take the day as holiday,I just never heard of it being illegal, I don't think it a healthy safety thing cos he worked from home when I was ill last year. And has on a few weekends too

I don't think it's illegal. I work from home quite a lot, and our company quite rightly states that you must have proper childcare in place during normal working hours. However, if I have work to finish off, I will often log on in the evenings, or even on my day off (I work flexible hours) and do a little to catch up with my toddler pottering around.

I obviously wouldn't arrange childcare to check my email for 10 mins, but do have it for all my working days - as otherwise I'd never get anything done.

I think there are tax implications if you are permanently based at home, but not for ad-hoc working at home.

thanks for the clarification. at least if its a days leave, he can leave the house & his laptop !!

It's not illegal, but it would be very surprising for an employer to agree it for the reasons everyone has mentioned.

Is it possible his boss got confused between something being illegal and something being against company policy?

It can't be illegal to work from home while looking after your child. I'm a Childminder so look after my child while I'm working. Very strange