Confusion Remains over Abolition of Retirement Age

The Draft Employment Equality (Abolition of Retirement Age Provisions) Regulations 2011 are in circulation at the moment, but as Mrs Markleham observes, their source is less than clear. The regular link circulating on Twitter is http://bit.ly/e1C2ZI and this redirects to a Dropbox file (but with no indication of its ownership or control): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18097599/draft%20age%20regs.doc. Edit: the draft Regulations can now be found on legislation.gov.uk.

The contents of the draft regulations are far from what was expected, something explained extremely well on Burt’s View – In Company Training Services Blog.

To confuse things further, ACAS were publishing various dates on their website – the page previously suggested the retirement age could remain until 6^th April 2012, but has since been corrected(?)/amended(?) to 30^th September 2011.

So while there doesn’t appear to be any official trace of the actual draft regulations available on any government website, there is at least a mention of them (Edit as above): according to Parliament’s website, the draft regulations were laid before the House of Commons on 16^th February; they are subject to an affirmative resolution procedure – this effectively means that a Joint Committee of Parliament has to approve them, rather than some Statutory Instruments that are approved unless objections are raised.

They also get a mention on the House of Lords Order Papers, listed under “Affirmative Instruments in Progress, Waiting for consideration by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments”; there currently is no date listed when this is to be considered.

To add a further twist to the observations of many commentators, Eversheds have stated on their HRlawyers Twitter feed that the draft regulations are set to be amended, the source for this reported to be the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, but still there remains no link to an official source to qualify this.

Filed under: Discrimination, General News, Laws & Regulations by Employment Law Clinic           Post created on: February 24th, 2011