Flexible working applications (FOI ref: 2091A/25)

Request

I would like to request the following information for the last three calendar years (2022, 2023, 2024, and any available data for 2025 to date): 

      1. The total number of flexible working requests submitted by police staff (not officers). 

      2. Of those, how many were: 

• Approved in full 
• Approved with conditions (e.g. trial periods, reviews) 
• Refused 

      3. Please break this down, where recorded, by: 

• Gender of applicant 
• Ethnicity of applicant 
• Whether the applicant was returning from maternity leave 

(If information about maternity returners is not recorded, please confirm that no such records are kept.) 

      4. Where requests were approved with conditions, please specify the type of conditions most commonly applied (e.g. trial periods, subject to review, dependent on medical evidence).

This request is for anonymised, aggregated data only. No personal or identifiable information is requested. 

Response 

Please find our response below and note that this data is based on the requests that have been formally logged on the systems and won’t include requests that have been managed locally, and decisions to reject/accept etc that have been made and not logged on force systems. 

I would like to request the following information for the last three calendar years (2022, 2023, 2024, and any available data for 2025 to date): 

      1. The total number of flexible working requests submitted by police staff (not officers). 

	2022	2023	2024	2025	Grand Total
Number of people	460	541	498	288	1787

 

     2. Of those, how many were: 

• Approved in full
• Approved with conditions (e.g. trial periods, reviews)
• Refused

 

Outcome	2022	2023	2024	2025	Grand Total
Amended	2	3	3	0	8
Approved - On Trial	78	128	69	44	319
Approved in Full	371	402	420	233	1,426
Rejected	8	6	3	7	24
Outcome not stated	1	2	3	4	10
Grand Total	460	541	498	288	1,787

 

      3. Please break this down, where recorded, by: 

• Gender of applicant
• Ethnicity of applicant
• Whether the applicant was returning from maternity leave

(If information about maternity returners is not recorded, please confirm that no such records are kept.) 

 

Gender: 

Outcome	2022		Grand Total
	Female	Male
Amended	0	2	2
Approved - On Trial	55	23	78
Approved in Full	271	100	371
Rejected	6	2	8
Outcome not stated	1	0	1
Grand Total	333	127	460

 

 

Outcome	2023		Grand Total
	Female	Male
Amended	2	1	3
Approved - On Trial	96	32	128
Approved in Full	299	103	402
Rejected	4	2	6
Outcome not stated	0	2	2
Grand Total	401	140	541

 

 

Outcome	2024		Grand Total
	Female	Male
Amended	2	1	3
Approved - On Trial	56	13	69
Approved in Full	305	115	420
Rejected	1	2	3
Outcome not stated	3	0	3
Grand Total	367	131	498

 

 

Outcome	2025		Grand Total
	Female	Male
Approved - On Trial	27	17	44
Approved in Full	162	71	233
Rejected	6	1	7
Outcome not stated	3	1	4
Grand Total	198	90	288

 

Ethnicity: 

2022

Outcome	Asian	Black	Chinese	Mixed	Not stated	White British	White Other	Grand Total
Amended	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	2
Approved - On Trial	11	0	0	4	1	62	0	78
Approved in Full	32	8	2	9	21	294	5	371
Rejected	1	0	0	1	0	6	0	8
Outcome not stated	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	1
Grand Total	46	8	2	14	22	363	5	460

 

2023

Outcome	Any Other	Asian	Black	Mixed	Not stated	Prefer not to say	White British	White Other	Grand Total
Amended	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	0	3
Approved - On Trial	1	7	2	2	5	0	110	1	128
Approved in Full	0	51	13	8	8	1	311	10	402
Rejected	0	1	0	1	0	0	4	0	6
Outcome not stated	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	0	2
Grand Total	1	60	15	11	13	1	429	11	541

 

2024

Outcome	Any Other	Asian	Black	Mixed	Not stated	Other	Prefer not to say	White British	White Other	Grand Total
Amended	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	3
Approved - On Trial	1	12	1	1	0	0	1	51	2	69
Approved in Full	0	52	9	10	18	1	1	322	7	420
Rejected	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	2	0	3
Outcome not stated	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	0	3
Grand Total	1	65	10	11	19	1	2	380	9	498

 

2025

Outcome	Asian	Black	Mixed	Not stated	Other	Prefer not to say	White British	White Other	Grand Total
Approved - On Trial	8	3	2	3	0	2	23	3	44
Approved in Full	26	2	4	12	1	0	186	2	233
Rejected	1	0	0	0	0	0	6	0	7
Outcome not stated	0	1	0	0	0	0	3	0	4
Grand Total	35	6	6	15	1	2	218	5	288

 

Maternity leave: 

 

Outcome	2022	2023	2024	2025	Grand Total
Amended	0	1	0	0	1
Approved - On Trial	9	7	11	4	31
Approved in Full	20	31	36	16	103
Outcome not stated	0	0	1	0	1
Rejected	2	1	0	1	4
Grand Total	31	40	48	21	140

 

      4.    Where requests were approved with conditions, please specify the type of conditions most commonly applied (e.g. trial periods, subject to review, dependent on medical evidence). 

We don’t hold that level of granular detail for each request. 

 

Please note that this data should be interpreted with caution. Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that this data has been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request may be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting the data.  

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of data which has relevance to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.   

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.