Information & advice

New regulations‚ the Employment Equality (Age) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2007‚ will come into force on 6th April 2007.  These Regulations make amendments to other pieces of legislation where necessary to avoid unlawful age discrimination‚ or to bring the law on age discrimination into line with other strands of discrimination law.  The age regulations themselves are not changed and the amendments do not represent radical changes to the law in this area.

The main amendments to be made include the following:  

• People who return to work after receiving Incapacity Benefit (IB)‚ then have a further period of incapacity cannot return to claiming IB if they are over state pension age.  An amendment means these people will now be entitled to Statutory Sick Pay.
• It will now be an unfair dismissal if an employee is selected for redundancy for exercising or seeking to exercise their right to be accompanied to a meeting to discuss a request not to be retired‚ or for acting as a companion in such a meeting.
• The fixed 13-week period for conciliation of an age discrimination claim has been removed.  This means that conciliation through ACAS can continue up to the hearing date.  This amendment brings age discrimination claims into line with other discrimination claims.

The full Regulations can be found at http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2007/20070825.htm