PROPOSED CHANGES The draft regulations will: • Prohibit unjustified age
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discrimination in the areas of recruitment, promotion and vocational training • Require employers who set their retirement age below the default age of 65 to justify or change it • Introduce a `duty to consider procedure for employers to carefully consider requests from their employees to continue working beyond retirement • Require employers to inform employees six months in advance of their retirement date so employees have plenty of time to plan for their retirement • Remove the current upper age limit for unfair dismissal and redundancy rights • In 2011 there will be a review on whether all retirement ages that are not objectively justified should be outlawed Penalties The penalties are not yet clear. A Department of Trade and Industry spokesman says: "Ifs down to the courts to decide what kind of penalties will apply to breaches, but the legislation on that hasn't been decoded yet." Timeline Consultation closed on 17 October 2005 and the guidelines are due to be published soon. The regulations are scheduled to take effect from 1 October 2006.