Time to train application form

Eligible employees who work in businesses that employ 250 or more employees have a statutory right to request time off for the purposes of study or training.  Our time to train application form will ensure that the employee includes the required information when making their request.

Time to train

The provisions operate by giving employees a legal right to ask you to give them time away from their normal job duties to undertake training they believe will improve both their effectiveness in your business and the performance of your business. You will then be expected to consider the request following a designated procedure, but you can turn it down where there is a good business reason to do so, including where you don’t believe the training will help improve business performance.

Types of training

Employees’ requests can be to undertake accredited training programmes leading to a qualification, or for unaccredited training to help them develop specific skills relevant to their job or your business. The provisions are flexible as to the type and manner of training.  For example, it can be undertaken at your premises or elsewhere, whilst performing the employee’s job duties or separately, can be provided or supervised by you or externally by a third party such as a local college, can be undertaken without supervision (e.g. e-learning), can be accredited or unaccredited and it need not be intended to lead to the award of a recognised qualification.  There is also no limit on the amount of time or training that an employee may request, and they may include more than one course of training in one request.

Eligibility

To make a statutory time to train request, an employee must:

•                     have worked for you for a continuous period of at least 26 weeks at the date of request

•                     subject to limited exceptions, not have made another application for time to train during the previous twelve months.

Some groups do not have the right to request time to train including agency workers, children of compulsory school age and young people aged 16 to 18 years old who are already under a duty to participate in education or training.

Application procedure

The employee’s application must be submitted in writing and contain the following information:

•                     a statement that it is an application to request time off for study or training made “under section 63D of the Employment Rights Act 1996”

•                     details of the proposed study or training, i.e. its subject matter, where and when it would take place, who would provide or supervise it and what qualification (if any) it would lead to

•                     an explanation of how the employee thinks the study or training would improve their effectiveness in your business and the performance of your business

•                     the date of the application

•                     the date and method that the employee’s last application (if any) was submitted.

Employees can submit a request in any written form they choose as long as it contains the required information - if it doesn’t it will be invalid and you should notify the employee accordingly so then can resubmit it with the errors corrected.  However, our Time to Train Application Form ensures all the correct information is provided by the employee in the first place.