Although budgets are tight at the moment, most employers recognise the benefits of a well-trained workforce.

For companies with 250 or more staff, from 6 April 2010 employees who have worked for you for at least 26 weeks will have a new legal right to request time off to participate in training that they believe will improve their performance or that of your business.

It will be your legal duty to consider any request seriously and respond within a reasonable time period.

The new legislation is being introduced in a phased approach as follows:

• from April 2010 – for employees in businesses with 250 or more employees
• from April 2011 – for all businesses.

To make a request for time to train an individual must be an employee and have worked for you continuously for at least 26 weeks on the date they make their request.

Although you can of course consider requests from all your employees, the following groups do not have a legal right to request time to train:

• agency workers
• members of the armed forces
• young people of compulsory school age
• young people who already have a statutory right to paid time off to undertake study or training (under section 63A of the Employment Rights Act 1996)
• 16 or 17 year olds who are already under a duty to participate in education or training as a result of Part 1 of the Education and Skills Act 2008
• 18 year olds who are treated as if Part 1 of the Education and Skills Act 2008 applies to them.

You should already have a policy in place to cover how you consider and respond to requests for flexible working and it is envisaged that you would take a similar approach with requests for time off to receive training.

Where you have a ‘sound business reason’ you will have the right to turn down such requests, for example:

• the proposed study or training would not improve the employee's effectiveness in your business
• the proposed study or training would not improve the performance of your business
• the burden of additional costs
• agreeing to the request would have a detrimental effect on your ability to meet customer demand
• you would be unable to reorganise work among existing staff
• you would be unable to recruit additional staff
• agreeing to the request would have a detrimental impact on quality
• agreeing to the request would have a detrimental impact on performance
• there would be an insufficiency of work during the periods the employee proposes to work
• there are planned structural changes during the proposed study or training period.

You are not obliged to pay them for the time spent in training, but will need to be careful to take into account the national minimum wage and working time regulations, where training time is treated as working time.

It will be important to handle such requests via the correct procedure as a dissatisfied employee may bring a claim in the employment tribunal on grounds that their employer has not followed the correct procedure.

In addition, take care not to treat an employee detrimentally or dismiss them for a reason relating to their request for time to train. If you act - or deliberately fail to act - in a way that results in unfair treatment of the employee and they suffer a detriment or are dismissed in these circumstances, then they may also make a complaint to an employment tribunal.

As with all new employment regulations, it is advisable to take legal advice to ensure that the new policies and procedures are implemented properly and do not inadvertently put your business at risk.

The contents of this article are for the purposes of general awareness only. They do not purport to constitute legal or professional advice. The law may have changed since this article was published. Readers should not act on the basis of the information included and should take appropriate professional advice upon their own particular circumstances.