The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7420 p382
30 September 2006

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News summary

Age discrimination rules may boost staff pool

Age discrimination legislation, which comes into effect next week, may help to tackle workforce shortages in many industries, including the health and social care sector.

The new laws apply to both employment and vocational training. One of the biggest changes is that the new national default retirement age will be 65 years for both men and women. In addition, employers will be required to give formal advance notice of a retirement date and must consider requests to continue employment after that date. The legislation will also remove the upper age limit for unfair dismissal and redundancy rights, remove the age limits for statutory payments, remove the upper and lower limits in the statutory redundancy scheme and provide exemptions for many age-based rules in occupational pension schemes.

The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 were published in March and come into force on 1 October 2006. Further information is available on the Department of Trade and Industry website