Opportunity Age: Meeting the challenges of ageing in the 21st century (published by the Department for Work and Pensions) 

EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY: AGE DISCRIMINATION IN EMPLOYMENT AND VOCATIONAL TRAINING

RESPONSES TO COMING OF AGE CONSULTATION 

The Government’s Coming of Age consultation on draft age discrimination legislation ended on 17 October 2005.  We aim to publish our analysis of responses to the consultation in the first quarter of 2006, when the regulations are scheduled to be laid before Parliament.  Subject to Parliamentary approval the legislation is due to come into force on 1 October 2006.

In the meantime all non-confidential responses are available here. There were 391 responses to the consultation, of which 248 were non-confidential. 

Good practice guidance, and specialist pensions guidance, will be published once the regulations have been approved by Parliament

The draft regulations:
 

• prohibit unjustified age discrimination in employment and vocational training
   

• require employers who 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. 

The final regulations will also include provisions relating to the statutory redundancy payments scheme following the steps we have taken to gauge stakeholder opinion on this issue.

PREVIOUS CONSULTATIONS

The documents relating to the Coming of Age consultation that we held in 2005 and Age Matters consultation that we held in 2003 continue to be are available:

Four documents made up the Coming of Age consultation pack:

• Consultation document (335Kb) Welsh version (271Kb)
• Summary document (95Kb) Welsh version (104.9Kb)
• Response form (68Kb) (for information only) MS Word version (141.5Kb), Welsh version (62Kb)
• Draft regulations (3.1Kb)

The partial Regulatory Impact Assessments (RIAs) that assess the costs and benefits of age discrimination legislation on employers and individuals, and on the macroeconomy and the Exchequer are also available:

• Age Discrimination – summary RIA (264Kb)
   
• Retirement ages (365Kb)
   
• Recruitment, Training and Promotion (105Kb)
   
• Statutory Redundancy Payments (136Kb)
   
• Unfair dismissal (80Kb)
   
• Occupational pensions (78Kb)
   
• Service-related benefits [Pay and non-pay benefits] (77Kb)
   

The Age Matters consultation material, on which we asked for comments on our policy proposals on age discrimination, also continues to be available:

• Consultation document (188Kb) [Welsh version (250Kb)]
   

• Summary document (52Kb) [Welsh version (42Kb)]
• Response form (259Kb) (for information only) [MS Word version (147Kb), Welsh version (243Kb)]
• Monitoring form (18Kb) [Welsh version (148Kb)]
• Report of the age aspects of Towards Equality and Diversity - a consultation in 2002 on implementing the European Employment Directive (68Kb) [Welsh version (70Kb)]
   
• Retirement ages in the UK: a review of the literature (808Kb) - research by Pam Meadows
   
• The initial Regulatory Impact Assessment (143Kb)
   

 A summary report of the responses to Age Matters (126Kb) Welsh (132Kb)]

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Last updated 26 January 2006