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Introduction to this document

Medical and dental appointments request form

Our form enables employees to request time off work to attend medical, dental or similar health-related appointments.

No statutory right

Other than in the case of antenatal appointments, there’s no statutory right for employees to have time off work for the purposes of attending medical, dental or other health-related appointments. This is entirely a contractual matter, and your contractual provisions (or non-contractual policy) may well provide that whether you grant time off – and whether any time off granted will be paid – is at your discretion and subject to prior line management approval. Be aware though that allowing a disabled employee to take time off for medical appointments related to their disability may be a reasonable adjustment under the Equality Act 2010.

Form benefits

Whilst an employee could verbally request time off for medical appointments, or they could send you an email or text message request, requiring completion of our Medical and Dental Appointments Request Form helps you bring this matter on to a more formal, structured footing. It also ensures the employee thinks carefully about their request, and how much time off work they need, before they submit it to you.

Form contents

Our form requests the employee to specify the type of medical appointment they wish to attend and the date and time of it, before going on to ask them when they would propose to leave and return to work (and therefore how long in total they intend to be absent for). Their actual return time will end up being dictated by travel and waiting times, but at least they can give you an early indication of when they’d expect to be back at work if everything is on time. Our form also asks the employee to provide proof of their appointment, but you don’t have to ask for this if you don’t want to. Finally, there’s a declaration for them to sign under which they must confirm that the information they’ve provided is true and they understand their request isn’t authorised until their line manager has countersigned the form. You could also send them our Time Off for Medical and Dental Appointments Letter at this stage.