Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans his Department has to publish guidance on worker's rights for people working from home.

ACAS has produced comprehensive guidance on the key employer considerations for when people are working at home during the pandemic. This covers health and safety and insurance – the link to the relevant section of the ACAS site can be found here https://www.acas.org.uk/working-from-home.

There is also a legal framework in place that grants all employees with 26 weeks’ continuous service with their employer the statutory Right to Request Flexible Working, where employees can request a change to their hours, working patterns or to work from home. There is supporting guidance currently available online which explains both eligibility and the process for making a request to work flexibly on GOV.UK – this can be found here https://www.gov.uk/flexible-working. In addition, there is the ACAS Code of Practice on making and responding to flexible working requests, which can be found here https://www.acas.org.uk/acas-code-of-practice-on-flexible-working-requests.