The legal right for employees to request time off from work to undertake training, will  be phased in from next April.  This new right is contained in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act which has now received Royal Assent.

Once the Act becomes law, employees will be able to make formal requests in the same way that they currently do for flexible working. Employers will have to give serious consideration to the request and demonstrate a good business reason for denying it.

Further Education Minister, Kevin Brennan, said that employers will not be obliged to pay for the training or pay staff’s wages while they are undertaking the training. However, he said that he expected that many businesses would choose to do so anyway.

The new right will be made available to employees in large businesses from April 2010, and will then be extended to all employees from April 2011.