This response is submitted by the Local Government Association (LGA) on behalf of local authorities. The LGA is a cross-party organisation that is the national voice of local government. We work with councils and central government to support, promote and improve local government. The LGA covers every part of England and Wales (through the WLGA) and includes county and district councils, London boroughs, metropolitan and unitary councils.
The Workforce Team of the LGA offers advice on employment issues and represents local government employer interests to central government, government agencies, trades unions and other interested parties. The LGA’s Local Government Resources Committee, whose remit includes workforce issues, comprises elected members from the LGA’s political groups providing cross party leadership to the LGA’s policy input. This submission has the support of all the political groups at the LGA.
The LGA manages sectoral collective bargaining in local government and national collective bargaining arrangements for fire, education and related sectors, covering, in total, over two million employees. Elected councillors (and other employer organisations where appropriate) and nationally recognised trade unions work together in a positive way to reach collective agreements on key employment issues such as pay and other terms and conditions. This helps to ensure that councils, and other employers, have pay, terms and conditions that are compliant with legislation and, where possible, model best practice.
The LGA works closely with member organisations and provides advice and support on employment matters. Given the context outlined above, it is vital that the views of councils are given full and careful consideration in the consultation.
This submission, responding to the areas about which we have most information or experience, is based on our knowledge of the issues as they impact on local government. We have obtained views on this issue from representatives from local authorities by way of a roundtable and survey, which have informed the response provided.
We have provided information gained from these methods in order to compile a picture of how requests for flexible working are dealt with currently, including challenges and areas where there is good practice; the impact of the proposed change and what further resources or other support could be offered to improve the situation.
These are areas of particular interest and importance to the local government sector, and where there has been most consensus across councils on the issues. We have also encouraged councils to respond directly to the consultation.
Flexible working is well embedded and valued across councils, with many local authorities having clear policies, procedures and manager toolkits in place.
Flexible working is widely seen as supporting recruitment, retention and employer brand and is where it is visibly supported at senior management level, impacts positively through the organisation.
Where an organisational commitment exists, requests are framed positively as “how can we make this work?” rather than as exceptions.
Many forms of flexible working are managed at a local, informal level already – the current process is quick and easy where it can be agreed.
Hybrid working is the most common and successfully managed form of flexibility.
Hybrid working, part time arrangements and enabling flexible start and finish times work well.
Fully home based working is perceived as the most difficult to agree and manage, and job shares can be complex, particularly where overlaps create additional costs and where coverage expectations are unclear.
Our HR colleagues in the sector also confirmed the government’s understanding that the nature of the work undertaken in the public sector can be limited in time and location. Public services by their nature are those being provided to their communities, with the need to maintain those valuable connections, particularly in customer or service-user facing roles.
These factors can limit the ability for all areas of local government to offer flexibility in the way it may perhaps be able to in some areas, alongside the need to consistently prioritise service needs.
Solving these challenges will involve, amongst other things, overcoming some of the preconceptions around what ‘flexibility’ can look like, and the ability of organisations to accommodate it in turn.
Manager confidence and capability: • reluctance to agree requests, including on occasion a reluctance to test or trial flexible working • perception that flexible working creates additional workload, both in relation to dealing with the request itself, the ongoing management of flexible workers, and the potential impact on the rest of a team or service • lack of confidence in assessing feasibility, there can be some reluctance to 'think outside the box’ when considering requests
Concerns about precedent-setting, including a mistaken belief that agreeing one request obliges employers to agree all similar requests, which can work in tension with the need for a broadly consistent approach.
Ongoing uncertainty about what constitutes a ‘reasonable’ refusal of a request, and how this should be evidenced.
Concerns around inconsistency across teams or services: we found that consistency can improve where clear procedures, including HR toolkits and guidance exist, and are well known and understood by managers.
Senior management attitudes, as well as individual managers’ attitudes, can impact positively or negatively on how flexible working is perceived, and how well flexible working requests are implemented.
HR professionals recognise that flexible working decisions can feel inconsistent across their organisations. While this is a real challenge, it also presents an opportunity to strengthen organisational principles and processes, reinforce good management practice, and ensure flexible working decisions are fair, transparent and well understood.
It is unavoidable that considering flexible working requests, and implementing them, can be resource intensive. The changes brought about by the ERA 2025, whilst broadly welcome, come at a time of significant resourcing challenge in the local government sector, coupled with the organisational complexities local government reorganisation will bring to those councils affected. Concerns regarding resourcing, both in HR and across all parts of local government, may have an impact on the ability of these employers to deal with requests and subsequent support of flexible working.
HR involvement is most often reactive rather than proactive, with HR colleagues typically becoming involved only when a request is not, or cannot, be agreed locally by the manager – makes is sound like HR forces the manager – better to say HR typically gets involved where the manager is unclear about how to manage a request or the employee is unhappy with their manager’s response to a request?
Where requests are agreed locally, HR usually have limited involvement and oversight, reducing opportunities to: • monitor consistency • identify learning • manage organisational risk.
There is already a requirement to deal with flexible working requests in ‘a reasonable manner’, but awareness of this standard is unclear and subjective.
Managers struggle with both how to test whether a request is reasonable, and subsequently whether a refusal is reasonable, and how to evidence that.
Given the proposed change to asking whether a refusal is reasonable on one of the statutory grounds, greater clarity or guidance on reasonableness is seen as potentially helpful in improving confidence and consistency.
Given the maturity of flexible working within the local government sector, the perception was that the proposed change in the legislation would not make a significant impact on addressing the existing barriers to more flexible working in the sector. Most were unsure whether the proposed ‘reasonableness’ requirement would make any difference.
Based on our discussions with the sector, other improvements could include: • stronger manager support and development, especially in handling complex requests • clearer national guidance on ‘reasonableness’ (possibly with worked case studies and examples of best practice) and similar guidance on managing flexible teams, including fully home based workers, delivered in good time ahead of changes being made, especially in formats which can be easily shared with and understood by managers • encouraging earlier HR oversight of an organisation’s full picture, and involvement to support decision-making rather than retrospectively in resolving disputes, and encouraging sharing of good practice across organisations and sectors • stronger reinforcement of flexible working as business as usual, not an exception – there is cautious support for a wider and more fundamental shift in mindset required for this, but concerns remain regarding resourcing and support available to implement this successfully • examples of more creative ways to support time-bound and location-sensitive posts could have more creativity and avoid creating a two-tier workforce for flexible working arrangements • more emphasis/support on creating a flexible working culture and not just agreeing concessions of flexible working arrangements for individuals, looking at how jobs are designed, inclusive management behaviours, a shift to managing by outcomes, knowledge management etc to truly overcome the barriers and encourage wider participation in work.
We hope you find the above information obtained through our networks helpful. Members of our Workforce Team are already in touch with DBT colleagues on this subject, and we remain happy to continue to that dialogue.
If you would like to discuss our submission further, please contact [email protected]
Yours faithfully
Councillor Pete Marland Chair, Local Government Resources Committee Local Government Association