Retirement Procedure - Failure to comply can cost 8 weeks’ pay
by Liam
Paragraph 2 of Schedule 6 of the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 requires employers to write to employees 6-12 months before retirement and inform them of the date that they are due to retire and that they have the right to request not to retire.
Under paragraph 4 of the same Regulations, if employers have failed to comply with paragraph 2, employers have a continuing duty to notify the employee of the above two matters right up until 14 days before the day they are due to retire.
If employers do not do this, any dismissal may be unfair depending on whether the meetings part of the retirement procedure is followed and depending on when (if at all) the employee is told of the above two matters.
In addition to unfair dismissal claims, employees can make a stand alone complaint to a Tribunal that the paragraph 2 notification was not given. Such a claim carries an award of up to 8 weeks’ pay.
It is interesting to note that the limitation period for this type of claim is 3 months from the last time the employer could notify in accordance with paragraph 2 (in other words 3 months before retirement) or, if later, 3 months of when the employee knew or should have known that the employer wanted him to retire. This means that in some cases, the claim for 8 weeks’ pay will have to be presented to the Tribunal before any claim for unfair dismissal as the limitation period could expire before the dismissal takes effect!
This could mean employees clogging up the tribunal system with two claims about the same retirement - one for unfair dismissal and one for failure to notify in accordance with paragraph 2.
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