The New Year brings new hopes and challenges at work and for those in HR the biggest focus will be getting to grips with the coming of age discrimination.

The Government consulted on proposals to legislate on age discrimination in Coming of Age which ended on 17 October. These draft regulations seek to prohibit unjustified age discrimination in employment and vocational training and require employers who set their retirement age below the default age of 65 to justify or change it.

In addition, the regulations also remove the age limits for Statutory Sick Pay, Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Adoption Pay and Statutory Paternity Pay.

Moreover, this proposed law introduces a new duty on employers to consider an employee’s request to continue working beyond retirement. For HR practitioners, when these new laws are enacted on 1 October, they will require employers to inform employees in writing, and at least six months in advance, of their intended retirement date.

This will allow people to plan for their retirement. By removing 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, should diversify the labour market.

Having received 350 responses, the DTI now plans to issue revised draft Regulations in March 2006 giving the HR community, lawyers and the courts alike only six months to prepare. In a post-Turner Report era, where the genuine retirement age will either be reset at 67, 68 or 69, major restructuring is likely to follow as a consequence in each workplace, particularly in terms of readjusting their financial planning.

To that end, HR practitioners need to remind themselves of the ruling in Rutherford, which will be effectively reversed and persons over the new normal retirement age (65, presently) will be able to bring unfair dismissal and other claims and will no longer be excluded from these statutory rights. More significantly, HR will have to ensure staff awareness of age issues, being positive about age, after all we are all getting older! Happy New Year! Or will that be ‘annual greetings’ post-October 2006?

Dr Stephen Hardy is Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Manchester and a Barrister specialising in employment and EU labour law.

Other articles in this series:

• Killing Bill takes centre stage




• Illegal workers




• Party protocol – take note or yule be sorry!




• Parental rights at work – whatever next?




• Pensions – protection or prevention?




• TUPE or not TUPE – not again!




• The new ET Rules – less litigation?




• Corporate manslaughter – the ball and chain




• The ‘equality’ treadmill




• Deregulation better than re-regulation?