Retirement not a fair reason for dismissal

Compulsory or forced retirement is a dismissal and retirement is no longer a fair reason for dismissal. Employers can set a contractual retirement age and insist on retirement on reaching that age. This is unlikely to be a dismissal, because the retirement age has already been “agreed” under the contract terms. However, enforcing a contractual retirement age in this way will be both directly and indirectly age discriminatory unless it can be justified (see Chapter 7: Discrimination, page 211).