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Update 67 - Default Retirement Age Made its way to headlines when recent coalition agreement plans has been reveled.

The new coalition government’s legislative programme for employment law remains largely unclear. Much is likely to depend on how the tensions between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats regarding their differing views on European Social Chapter legislation are resolved.

However, one thing we do know from the initial coalition agreement is that the new government is committed to phasing out the national default retirement age of 65. This is not surprising, in light of the intention to increase the age at which men can take their state pension to 66 from 2016. The same increase is planned to be extended to women from 2020.

 

It remains to be seen what shape the phasing out of the default retirement age will take. An obvious option is to increase the default retirement age in increments of a year or two at a time, before abolishing it altogether. It is therefore realistic to imagine that by the end of the next full session of Parliament, the current default retirement age of 65 may be gone.