The Regulations have introduced a national default retirement age of 65 years. In practice, this means that employers can retire employees, or set retirement ages, at or above the age of 65 years.
Retirement should follow a fair process to prevent an employee making a claim for automatic/unfair dismissal and age discrimination to an employment tribunal.
A fair retirement is a retirement that takes effect on or after the national default retirement age (or on or after the employer's normal retirement age, if there is one) AND where the employer has given the employee written notice of the date of his or her intended retirement and has informed the employee that he or she has the right to request to continue working.
You should notify your employees in writing of their right to request to go on working beyond their retirement dates, not more than 12 months before that intended date, or less than six months in advance. Failure to follow this procedure will render the dismissal unfair.
This retirement procedure template bundle is in downloadable Microsoft Word format and has 9 pages.
This bundle contains the following:
Extract from the FPB's Employment Guide 2009: "Retirement"
3.3 – Letter 1: Notification of Proposed Date of Retirement
3.4 – Letter 2: Notification of Meeting to Discuss Request to Continue Working Beyond Retirement Age
3.5 – Letter 3: Agreement with Request to Continue Working Beyond Retirement Age
3.6 – Letter 4: Rejection of Request to Continue Working Beyond Retirement Age
3.7 – Letter 5: Notification of Appeal Meeting
3.8 – Letter 6: Following Appeal, Agreeing to Continuation of Employment
3.9 – Letter 7: Following Appeal, Rejecting Continuation of Employment
