Application of the permit for inexcusable duty due to illness of a minor child.

The consultation deals with the possibility of granting permission as an inexcusable duty to care for children under the age of illness.

Article 48.j) of Royal Legislative Decree 5/2015, of 30 October, approving the consolidated text of the Law on the Basic Status of Public Employees (hereinafter TRLEBEP), establishes that the permits and their duration will be at least the following:

“j) For a time indispensable for the fulfillment of an inexcusable duty of a public or personal nature and for duties related to the reconciliation of family and working life.”

The duty of a personal nature or related to the reconciliation of family and working life would be fundamentally characterized by being that situation that cannot be covered by any of the permits and surpluses contained in the TRLEBEP, whose concession, conditioned to the needs of service, will be authorized or denied in a manner motivated by the hierarchical superior.

It is necessary to point out that the “inexcusable duty” is an indeterminate legal concept that has been interpreted in accordance with the definition provided in the Manual of Procedures for Human Resources Management, published by Resolution of December 14, 1992 by the Secretariat of State for Public Administration:

“Inexcusable duty” means the obligation incumbent upon a person whose failure to perform the duty entails a civil, criminal or administrative liability. Civic duties such as participation in electoral processes and the exercise of the right to vote must also be included in the same concept.”

The Agreement of the Standing Committee of the Higher Staff Commission on the criteria for the application of the hourly flexibility measure “time bag” provided for in paragraph 8.8 of the Resolution of 14 April 2026 of the Secretary of State for the Civil Service, which provides instructions on working hours and hours of staff in the service of the General Administration of the State and its public bodies. In its section 2, it includes a series of characteristics of the permit for inexcusable duty:

(a) In principle and in general, it can be said that the defining element is that the cases in question are of obvious gravity, so that they are obligations whose failure to comply generates direct and personal liability for the person concerned, whether civil, criminal or administrative.

b) It is a residual permit, of subsidiary application, in the sense that it is applied only when there are no other permits or measures that cover the situation that is intended to be protected through it.

(c) It must therefore confine itself to specific and unforeseeable situations, which do not extend over time, and exceptional situations, which are not repeated; otherwise, it would seem appropriate to apply other measures to reconcile or make working hours more flexible.

Thus, the duty of a personal nature or related to the reconciliation of family and working life would be fundamentally characterized by being that situation that cannot be covered by any of the permits and surpluses contained in the TRLEBEP, whose concession, conditioned to the needs of service, will be authorized or denied on a reasoned basis by the hierarchical superior.

In this sense, the inexcusable duty cannot become a figure that substitutes for other permissions. Since the inexcusable duty is temporarily indefinite, since it will be extended for the indispensable time, it is not so much the duration of the permit that has to be valued by the managing body, but the factual assumption to which the requests respond.

In any case, the competent body for the granting of the permit must assess the concurrent circumstances in each case, since the granting of the permit for inexcusable duty is of a potestative nature. Therefore, if the managing body considers that the situation for which the permit is requested does not comply with the notes mentioned above, relating to a specific, unforeseeable and exceptional situation that must characterize the causative act, it may reject the aforementioned request.

In any case, it is not possible to analyze whether or not the permit is valid, but it will be the competent unit that, in view of the circumstances that exist in the specific case and the justification of the same, resolves the concession or not of the same.

Resolution of April 14, 2026, of the Secretary of State for the Civil Service, which provides instructions on the working hours and hours of staff in the service of the General Administration of the State and its public agencies. provides in Section 8.8 for the existence of a pocket of hours of up to 5% of the annual working day of each employee, for cases of care of underage children and minors subject to guardianship or fostering; and for elderly people and people with disabilities up to the first degree of consanguinity or affinity.

In addition, it is necessary to remember the possibility of using other permits and measures provided for by regulations, such as the reduction of the working day regulated in article 48(h) for reasons of legal custody, when the official has the direct care of someone under twelve years of age, the enjoyment of up to six days of leave for particular matters during each year, provided in article 48(k) of the TRLEBEP or the leave for the care of a minor child affected by cancer or another serious illness established in article 49(e) TRLEBEP.

All of the foregoing is without prejudice to recalling that, according to the regime of competences of this management center, the answers to queries issued by this general directorate are merely informative and, consequently, are not of a binding criterion, nor do they give rise to rights or expectations of law, nor imply any link with the type of procedures to which they refer. Furthermore, in the absence of a mandatory or binding nature, the bodies receiving such replies may, where appropriate, finally take a decision that does not correspond to the opinion contained therein.

The responses to queries contained in this bulletin address the issues raised in the light of the regulations in force at the time of their issuance, so that such responses may be affected by subsequent legislative changes or judicial decisions.