If you have a medical appointment, how should you and your manager deal with it?

• You are supposed to arrange the appointment outside your working hours if possible.
• But the company accepts that it is not always possible.
• If the appointment takes you out of only part of your shift, you should get paid special leave.
• If the appointment takes you out of your whole shift and you have not been able to arrange cover, you may have to take annual leave; if that's not possible (eg. if you have run out of annual leave entitlement), you should get paid special leave.
• This implies that if you are able to arrange cover, you should get paid special leave.
• If your medical condition is covered by the Disability Discrimination Act, management will still expect you to try to arrange appointments outside work time, but if that is not possible, then you must get paid special leave for the appointment, and will not have the absence counted as an item of non-attendance.
• LUL's policy refers only to annual leave and paid special leave, so they should not try to force you to take unpaid special leave.

If you have any questions, or if you think that management are infringing your rights, contact your RMT rep immediately.

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The exact wording of LUL's guidance to its managers is as follows:

The standard requires employees to attend to personal affairs, including appointments of a non-urgent nature (eg. hospital, doctors, and dentists) outside of their normal working hours, where possible.

However, where it is not possible to arrange these appointments outside of the employee's normal working hours, and only part of the shift is required, you will consider requests for appropriate paid special leave. If a whole shift is required and the employee has not been able to make appropriate cover arrangements for the particular shift, the employee may be expected to take annual leave. If this is not possible, you will consider requests for paid special leave.

If the employee has a condition / illness which is covered by the DDA, you should still encourage them to arrange appointments of a non-urgent nature outside of their working hours. If this is not possible, the employee must be granted special leave with pay under the conditions of the DDA. Such absence must not be classified as an item of non-attendance.