Contractual retirement date

Payne v Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Group plc EAT TLR 12 October

For the purposes of a claim for unfair dismissal, an employee’s normal retirement age cannot be lower than his contractual retirement age. The applicant’s contractual retirement age was 65. The employer’s pension scheme originally allowed employees to take their pension at 65 but, without consultation, the employers later reduced that to the age of 62, informing employees that they had to retire at 62 and could not work beyond that age without consent. The tribunal rejected the employer’s arguments that the applicant had by his conduct accepted a variation to his contractual retirement age or alternatively that the variation was implied into the contract. The contractual retirement age remained at 65 despite the amendments to the pension scheme. An employee could not be required to retire before his contractual retirement age because until then he was contractually entitled to remain in employment. Therefore, as the applicant s normal retirement age was 65, he had been unfairly dismissed.