Archived News

Age Discrimination – Draft Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006

15 February 2006

Do you ever advertise jobs with an age range – e.g. 20 – 30 or fail to hire someone you interview because they are too old or too young? If so you may need to revise your policies.

The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations (the Age Regulations) 2006 will prohibit direct and indirect age discrimination, harassment and victimisation. The Age Regulations are expected to come into force on 1 October 2006.

The draft regulations:

prohibit unjustified age discrimination in employment and vocational training
require employers who currently set their retirement age below the default age of 65 to justify or change it
introduce a new duty on employers to consider an employee’s request to continue working beyond retirement
require employers to inform employees in writing, and at least 6 months in advance, of their intended retirement date. This will allow people to plan for their retirement
remove the upper age limit for unfair dismissal and redundancy rights, giving older workers the same rights to claim unfair dismissal or receive a redundancy payment as younger workers, unless there is a genuine retirement
include provisions relating to service related benefits and occupational pensions.

The regulations also remove the age limits for Statutory Sick Pay, Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Adoption Pay and Statutory Paternity Pay. We can advise you on what you should be doing now to ensure you are compliant with the new rules when they come into force in October.