Age Discrimination Tribunal

Details have been published of the first age discrimination claim in the UK .The Employment Tribunal has just found in favour of Freshfields in the highly publicised claim brought by Peter Bloxham, a former Freshfields partner.

Mr Bloxham had claimed that the transitional pension scheme operated by Freshfields on the closure of its existing pension scheme was directly discriminatory. Under the old scheme and the transitional arrangements, a partner who was 54 at the date of closure of the scheme and retired with consent would be subject to a discounted pension whereas those who were 55 and over at that time would receive their full entitlement. As Mr Bloxham was 54 and had only received a discounted pension he had suffered less favourable treatment on grounds of age.

The tribunal found that this treatment was objectively justified. Bloxham retired at a time when Freshfields, for compelling business reasons, was introducing a far less generous retirement scheme for the partnership as a whole. In order to be fair to those few who were very close to retirement, such as Bloxham, the firm gave them the option to choose to retire under the original, more generous scheme, rather than just imposing on them the newer, lesser scheme.

The firm went through a very extensive review and consultation exercise. They had considered whether they should remove the 20% discount for Bloxham and the few others in his position, but decided that this would be unfair and perverse to the many other partners and ex-partners, who would have had to subsidise this by suffering a reduction in their own benefits. In addition, no fair and less discriminatory alternative could be found to deal with Bloxham's situation. In these circumstances, the 20% discount on Bloxham's pension was objectively justified.

The two sides are unsurprisingly viewing the judgment from very different perspectives: while Freshfields' solicitors Lewis Silkin described it as "fluent and well-written", sources close to the Bloxham side saw it as "disappointing in its brevity".