Retirement & Unfair Dismissal - How they relate to each other

An employee cannot claim Unfair Dismissal if the employee is at the normal retirement age for their job with the employer, as this will be an automatically fair reason for dismissal, as long as the retirement age can be objectively justified.

However, where there is no retirement age, an employer can no longer dismiss an employee based upon their age. They will have to use one of the automatically fair reasons for dismissal.

(The employer should notify the employee of the date on which he intends that employee should retire and inform the employee that he has a right to request work beyond retirement age.)

For further information, please see our article on The Equality Act 2010.

This does not apply if the dismissal is also linked to one of the Unfair Dismissal Exceptions. For example, if the employee was dismissed for belonging to a trade union.
 

Excluded Groups - excluded from unfair dismissal protection

Employment Law