ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the legislation, and considers the way it operates in case law. Under the original 2006 Regulations, the employer was permitted to apply a default retirement age of 65 years or higher, provided he followed a statutory procedure which enabled the employee to request to be allowed to continue working after that default age, either indefinitely or for a set period. As is usual under the Equality Act, direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation on grounds of age are prohibited. The Supreme Court considered a number of European Court of Justice (ECJ) cases from outside the United Kingdom, dealing not only with retirement ages, but other restrictions based on age. The Court of Appeal concluded that the employee's relevant circumstances were not materially different from those of employees aged over 35; in both cases the relevant circumstance was their age, though the age itself was different.
