Draft Age Equality Regulations Published

The Age Equality Regulations, due to come into force in October 2006, have been published in draft on the DTI website.

The Regulations are likely to have a great impact on employment and other relationships: they will impose new obligations on employers, providers of vocational training, trade unions, professional associations, employers' organisations, and trustees and managers of occupational pension schemes. They will give new rights to employees, the self-employed, contract workers, office holders, members of trade organisations and anyone in vocational training.

impose upon employers a 'duty to consider' an employee's request to continue working beyond retirement; and

Although implementation of the legislation is still more than a year away, it engenders such a cultural change that employers should begin now auditing practices and procedures that may create potential age discrimination issues. To assist you we have produced a questionnaire that may help highlight areas which might need reviewing. Click here to access the questionnaire.

There will be a three-month consultation period, which will close on 17 October 2005. See the draft Regulations on the DTI website by clicking on this link: http://www.dti.gov.uk/er/equality/age.htm

For best results when printing set your page orientation to landscape.

Employment law is a complex area which is constantly changing, and we deal here with one small aspect. This alerter is not a substitute for detailed advice on specific matters and should not be taken as providing legal advice on the topics discussed. If you believe that the content of any of our alerters is relevant to you, we recommend that you take legal advice so that all the circumstances of your query may be considered. If you would prefer not to receive communications of this kind, we will remove your name from our database for these purposes. All you have to do is send us an email marked Unsubscribe.