Default retirement age to be abolished

The government has committed itself to abolishing the default retirement age of 65 by 1 October 2011.

Abolition was a feature of the coalition agreement, and the previous government had promised a review, but the timing is earlier than expected.

Launching a consultation on the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations, which introduced the existing system in 2006, employment relations minister Edward Davey said transitional arrangements would begin in April 2011.

'With more and more people wanting to extend their working lives we should not stop them just because they have reached a particular age,' he said. 'We want to give individuals greater choice and are moving swiftly to end discrimination of this kind.

'Although the government is proposing to remove the default retirement age (DRA), it will still be possible for individual employers to operate a compulsory retirement age, provided that they can objectively justify it. Examples could include air traffic controllers and police officers.'

A spokesman for the Department of Business Innovation and Skills said: 'In removing the DRA, the government intends also to remove all associated statutory retirement procedures, including the duty on employers to give a minimum of six months' notice of retirement to employees and the right for employees to request to work beyond their retirement age.

'Given the intention of phasing out the DRA, the government believes there would be little justification for retaining this administrative burden on employers and that the existing legal framework is sufficient for both employers and employees.'

The spokesman added that the current legal framework allowed employers to objectively justify a compulsory retirement age and removing the DRA would not change that position.

The charity Age UK, which fought and lost a three-year legal battle to get the retirement age scrapped, welcomed the announcement.

The High Court ruled last year that the UK's default retirement age of 65 was not unlawful, though Mr Justice Blake said the case for raising the age was 'compelling' (see Solicitors Journal 153/36, 29 September 2009).

Earlier the ECJ had ruled that that derogations from the ban on age discrimination could be lawful if they were 'justified by legitimate social policy objectives, such as those related to employment policy, the labour market or vocational training'.