The new Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 were introduced to stop age-related discrimination and harassment in the workplace. While these new rules came into force on 1 October 2006, the pension provisions were delayed until 1 December 2006.
A quick summary
The following are some of the things you’ll need to think about and review to make sure you meet the new guidelines.
- Retirement ages — since 1 October 2006 it has been illegal to force an employee to retire from employment before age 65 without objective justification. As this means employees may be able to continue in work longer than originally planned, you’ll need to consider how this will affect company pension arrangements. Also, you may need to consider how the new rules impact on pension arrangements if an employee is kept on past the default retirement age.
- The procedures you follow to retire an employee — since 1 October 2006, you must have followed a process for a retirement to be considered ‘fair’.
- Benefit policies or practices relating to pensions — pensions, as part of an employee’s pay and conditions, need to be reviewed as part of the wider package of employee benefits.
- The trustees will need to look at the trust deed and rules for your occupational pension scheme, and all other relevant documentation (eg scheme booklets, announcement letters). The trustees will also need to review all practices applied, discretionary or otherwise, in operating the scheme.
- Eligibility criteria for your workplace scheme (whether an occupational pension scheme or personal pension arrangements).
- The impact of the non-discrimination rule, has been incorporated in all occupational pension schemes since 1 December 2006.
- Age-related contributions (whether made to an occupational or personal pension arrangements for your employees).
- Pension arrangements under which contributions or accrual of further benefits stop when pension benefits are taken, even though the employee continues in employment.
- Life cover or other pension-related benefits for employees, particularly where this automatically stops at a specific age.
Find out more
We’ve put together a questions and answers sheet. So take a look at the following link to find out more.
This information is based on our understanding of current taxation law and HM Revenue & Customs practice, which may change.
