There is no general legal right in the UK to time off work for a medical appointment. Acas states it plainly: employees have no statutory entitlement to attend routine GP, dental, or hospital appointments during working hours, and where an employer does allow it, the time off can be unpaid.
That is the rule. The exceptions are what actually matter, because five specific categories of appointment do carry statutory or Equality Act protection — and most disputes happen because neither side realises which category they are in.
Key Takeaways
- No general statutory right to time off for medical appointments; employers have discretion.
- Antenatal appointments are the clearest exception — employees get reasonable paid time off from day one.
- Disability-related appointments can require a reasonable adjustment under the Equality Act 2010.
- Employers still owe a duty of care, and blanket refusals are hard to defend when an appointment genuinely cannot be moved.
The Default Position: Discretion, Not Entitlement
Your employer is buying your time during contracted hours. A routine appointment that could be scheduled outside those hours is, legally speaking, your problem to solve.
In practice, most UK employers allow it. Acas advises employers to be flexible, to recognise that many appointments genuinely cannot be rearranged — hospital consultant slots, specialist clinics, procedures with fixed dates — and not to assume an employee is being evasive when they decline to share details.
What the employer decides is whether the time is:
- Paid, under a discretionary policy
- Unpaid, deducted from salary
- Taken as annual leave, in whole or half days
- Made up, by working the hours at another time
None of these is legally mandated for a routine appointment. Check your staff handbook — many UK employers offer a paid allowance of a few hours or days a year for medical appointments, and that policy is enforceable even though the underlying entitlement is not statutory.
The Five Exceptions That Carry Legal Protection
| Situation | Right | Paid? |
|---|---|---|
| Antenatal appointments (employee) | Reasonable time off, from day one of employment | Paid |
| Accompanying a pregnant partner to antenatal appointments | Up to 6.5 hours, maximum 2 appointments | Usually unpaid |
| Disability-related appointments | Reasonable adjustment under Equality Act 2010 | Depends on the adjustment |
| Gender reassignment-related care | Protected characteristic — cannot be treated less favourably | Per employer policy |
| Emergency involving a dependant | Reasonable unpaid time off for dependants | Unpaid |
Antenatal Appointments
The strongest right in the list. An employee who is pregnant is entitled to a reasonable amount of paid time off for antenatal appointments, and this applies from the first day of the job with no qualifying period. Antenatal care is not just scans — it includes relaxation and parenting classes where recommended by a midwife or doctor.
Agency workers acquire the same paid right once they have completed their 12-week qualifying period.
Partners get a narrower right: unpaid time off to accompany the pregnant person to a maximum of two appointments, capped at 6.5 hours each. Our guide to maternity and paternity leave in the UK covers what follows from there.
Disability-Related Appointments
This is the exception most often missed. If you are disabled within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010 and your condition requires regular appointments — dialysis, physiotherapy, oncology follow-ups, mental health therapy — allowing that time off can be a reasonable adjustment the employer is legally required to make.
It is not automatic. The test is whether the adjustment is reasonable in the circumstances, which weighs cost, disruption, and the size of the organisation. But an employer who applies a rigid “appointments in your own time” rule to a disabled employee without considering the adjustment duty is exposed.
If this applies to you, say so explicitly and in writing. Connect the request to the condition and the barrier: “My condition requires fortnightly hospital appointments that are only scheduled during working hours. I am requesting flexibility around these as a reasonable adjustment.” That framing triggers a legal duty; “can I pop out on Thursday” does not.
Time Off for Dependants
Employees have a statutory right to reasonable unpaid time off to deal with an emergency involving a dependant. The critical word is emergency. A child falling ill unexpectedly qualifies. A pre-booked orthodontist appointment for the same child, arranged three weeks ago, does not — that is planned, and planned care falls outside the right.
A Practical Framework for Requesting Time Off
Use this sequence. It resolves the overwhelming majority of cases without anyone reaching for legislation.
- Try to schedule outside working hours first. Many GP surgeries run early-morning and evening clinics. If you cannot, say so — “this was the only slot available” is a materially stronger request than “this is when I booked it”.
- Give as much notice as possible. A four-week heads-up is a scheduling problem; a same-morning notification is a staffing problem.
- Say which category you are in, if it is one of the five. You do not have to disclose a diagnosis. “This is a disability-related appointment” is sufficient to engage the adjustment duty without disclosing anything more.
- Propose the arrangement, do not just request the absence. “I’ll take it as a half-day of annual leave” or “I’ll make the two hours up on Friday” gets approved faster than an open-ended ask.
- Get the answer in writing. Particularly where the time is agreed as paid — verbal approvals evaporate at payroll.
What Employers Can and Cannot Ask For
There is no legal requirement for an employee to provide proof of a medical appointment. Many employers ask for an appointment card or letter anyway, and volunteering one often helps a request through.
Where employers need care is in what they ask about. Health information is special category data under UK GDPR, and asking why someone is seeing a specialist goes well beyond what is needed to make a scheduling decision. The appointment date, time, and expected duration are all a manager legitimately needs. Our guide to GDPR and employee leave data sets out the boundaries.
Acas also warns employers against assuming an appointment is a pretext. Sensitive appointments — fertility treatment, mental health, screening — are exactly the ones employees are least likely to explain, and treating reluctance as suspicion is how employers end up with a discrimination claim.
Building a Policy That Actually Works
If you set policy rather than request time off, the version that generates fewest disputes has four parts:
- A stated paid allowance. A defined number of hours per year (16 is a common figure) removes case-by-case negotiation entirely.
- A carve-out for the protected categories. Antenatal and disability-related appointments should sit outside the general allowance, not compete with it.
- A “cannot reasonably be rearranged” test rather than a blanket ban, so hospital appointments are handled differently from a routine check-up.
- A recording method that separates it from sick leave. Medical appointments logged as sickness absence distort your absence rate and can push people over trigger points unfairly.
That last point matters more than it sounds. Our guide to the absence rate formula explains why mixing appointment time into sickness figures makes the whole metric unusable.
What This Means for You
Check your staff handbook before you assume the statutory position applies — a large share of UK employers are more generous than the law. If you fall into one of the five protected categories, name the category in writing when you ask. If you are the employer, write the allowance down, because a documented policy is faster and fairer than a manager’s discretion applied inconsistently across a team.
Leave Balance lets you configure medical appointment time as its own leave type, separate from annual leave and sickness, with its own allowance and approval rules — so the hours are tracked, the absence data stays clean, and nobody’s appointment quietly becomes a sick day. Flat $10/month, unlimited employees, 14-day free trial.
This article is general information about UK employment law, not legal advice. Take advice on your own circumstances.
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