Four accounts of one UK office-attendance dispute, plus the regulator’s new draft guidance, describe four different decision-makers: a union, an employer, a future tribunal and Acas. Read together, they converge on the same unit of decision, the individual line manager, and on the same requirement: a documented reason.
What the coverage says
The raw material is a bank, a union and a statute. Barclays told most UK staff they would need to be in the office three days a week from October, up from two for many full-time employees, with managing directors at four. That is the account Wealth Professional published on 17 September, and it is the account that frames the dispute as a negotiation. Unite, which the outlet says represents nearly 80 per cent of Barclays’ UK workforce, organised a letter against the change and put three demands on the table: a one-off time-in-office payment, an exemption for anyone whose commute exceeds 40 minutes or 35 miles each way, and more scheduling flexibility for staff with caring responsibilities. The outlet reports that the bank had so far declined to meet any of the demands.
IBTimes ran the same story the same day with a longer list. It adds holiday-period exemptions, one office day a week for carers and childcare support, and it records Barclays saying that it recognises the benefits of flexible working but also values in-person collaboration, and that attendance requirements vary by business area. In both accounts the question is whether the policy is fair to staff, and the audience being addressed is the bank.
FStech picked the story up after the outcome. It reports that the three-day requirement, originally due on 5 October, now starts at the beginning of 2027, and that staff who want to defer must get approval from their line manager during a transition period. A Barclays spokesperson told the outlet: “We have continued to listen to colleague feedback to ensure colleagues have the right support while enabling us to deliver the benefits of working together in person.” FStech also notes that Unite said in-person work could support collaboration, team development and relationship building, and that it opposed a blanket increase. The outlet places the dispute among other UK banks facing resistance to tighter attendance rules, and mentions TSB staff threatening legal action over Santander’s proposed three-day policy.
The fourth account looks forward instead of back. On 5 October Personnel Today published a column by Richard Fox, an employment partner at Keystone Law, on what the Employment Rights Act 2025 will change for flexible working requests. He writes that employers refusing a request will have to show one of the eight statutory grounds and that it is reasonable to rely on it, that the regulations are not yet published, and that changes are expected in late 2027. He points to Barclays as proof that “there is currently no settled view” on whether an attendance rule is reasonable or fair, and asks: “Are we really ready for the employment tribunals to make a call on that?”
Where the accounts differ
The accounts differ on who the story is about. The September pieces treat the union as the actor and the bank as the respondent. FStech treats the bank as the actor and the transition period as the news. Fox treats neither as the actor: his subject is a tribunal system that, he writes, hears so few flexible working cases that rulings will arrive slowly, and where employment judges will often sit without the lay members who once brought industry and union experience.
They also differ on numbers in ways that matter less than they look. Wealth Professional reports more than 1,000 signatures on the letter, and quotes Rick Coyle, a national officer at Unite, saying thousands had signed. FStech says thousands. IBTimes gives Unite’s Barclays membership as about 36,000, which squares with FStech’s “about 80 per cent” of 45,000 UK employees. That is a growing signature count, not a conflict.
The real disagreement is about what the dispute shows. Coyle argued that “most employers in banking and financial services are generally embracing greater flexibility,” which casts a three-day rule as an outlier. Fox reads the same episode as evidence that the country has no settled view at all. Those are incompatible readings of the same facts, and the coverage does not resolve them.
What the Acas draft adds
The primary document that sits underneath all four accounts is the consultation Acas opened on 1 October on a draft statutory Code of Practice for flexible working requests, open until 11:59pm on 17 December 2026. We covered its opening on the day. Our overview of UK employment rights changes due before 2027 covers the wider timetable. Its foreword states the future test in plain terms: employers will be required to take specific steps to consult an employee before refusing a request, and can refuse only where there is a statutory business reason and it is reasonable to refuse on that basis. Employers “will need to approach requests with an open mind, consider relevant evidence and clearly explain their decision.”
The draft Code builds its approach on four principles: reaching decisions based on evidence, adapting where possible to enable a request, working together to find solutions, and acting transparently and consistently. Acas also reports that flexible working matters account for less than 1% of the early conciliation notifications and employment tribunal claims it receives, and says it wants to keep that proportion low by getting employers and employees to resolve concerns early.
What the coverage adds up to
This section is our reading, not any outlet’s. The Barclays mandate is an employer-set attendance policy, and the new statutory regime governs individual requests to change working arrangements, so the two are not the same legal event. The commercial dispute and the statutory change are nonetheless converging on one point of decision.
FStech reports that the Barclays transition runs on line manager approval. Acas’s draft Code asks for evidence, consultation and a clearly explained decision, which in practice is a decision made by a manager and recorded by HR. Fox’s column describes a tribunal that will one day test whether that decision was reasonable. Each account stops at a different point in that chain, and none of them describes the chain.
The chain has a practical consequence. When a dispute like this one is settled by letting individuals defer on a manager’s say-so, the organisation generates a stack of small, individual decisions. Under the regime Acas is drafting for, each of those is the kind of decision a tribunal could eventually be asked to read. That is the finding the four accounts support only when read together: the policy argument happens in public, and the legal exposure accumulates in the approvals.
What it means for the HR leader
The first job is to find out where decisions are actually being made. If a transition, a hybrid rule or an exemption process lets line managers approve or refuse, HR needs to see those decisions, with the reason given, in one place. A spreadsheet maintained by each team will not hold up when a pattern question arrives two years later, which Fox says is how long cases can wait for a hearing.
The second is to test the reasons themselves against the Acas principles. A reason that rests on evidence, such as team output, coverage or a documented operational need, reads differently from a reason that rests on preference. The draft Code asks for the first kind.
The third is to use the consultation. It closes on 17 December, and Acas says it wants to know whether the draft is clear and practical. Employers that run request workflows in an HRIS or case-management tool are well placed to say what the Code needs to specify, because they know where today’s process loses the reasoning.
The last is to keep the two questions apart. An attendance policy and a statutory request raise different legal tests, and a workforce that is arguing about the first will start filing the second once the new rules arrive. Training managers to recognise which one is in front of them is cheaper than learning it from a tribunal.
Source: Acas consultation: draft Code of Practice on requests for flexible working
