My wife works for one of the largest Financial Institutions in the UK. Prior to proceeding on Maternity Leave (awaiting our first child) she was based in an office in Peterborough. I am in the Royal Navy and am based in Plymouth. We made the decision to move to Plymouth so that we could bring up our son together rather than me only see him at weekends.

My wife is about to put in a Business Case for her to begin working from home rather than move her back to the office in Peterborough – for obvious reasons. Her four Managers are happy about this and all her ‘paperwork’ is electronic.

My logic tells me that there could be no ‘good’ reason (apart from the initial expense of setting up the home office – although this would be an inconsequential expense for such a large organisation) for the company to refuse what is a perfectly reasonable ‘work-life balance’ request.

This is very much the opposite of the recent query regarding the individual asked to return to an office after working from home.

My questions is this: does the employer need to supply reasonable grounds for insisting she works from Peterborough, when there seems to be no real need for her to do so?
Kenny Mclachlan