Want to work after age 65 but work insisting contracted hours double - is that legal?

[zoggs]

My colleague is approaching her 65th birthday. She has 8 years service and reduced her hours to 15 per week about a year ago. She has been told that in order to carry on working past her 65th birthday she will have to increase her contracted hours to 30. Can the employer make this a condition or is it unreasonable? She wants to carry on working 2 days a week and is quite capable of doing so but if she has to increase to 4 days a week she will leave (and they know that).

The only thing I can think of is that if her contract is due to end (already negotiated) then she will have to re-negotiate; otherwise I can't see how it applies. But I'm not a HR expert, I'm a manager; you need flowerybeanbag et al
I just didn't want your post unanswered.
take a look at this to see if it sheds any light on it?

Your employer must consider a request to work past retirement, but there's no compulsion on them to agree to it, and they can suggest alternative working patterns/arrangements if they want to. It's also fine for them to retire your colleague as long as they follow the correct procedure. See here and here.

Seems strange of them to want her to increase her hours though, does she know why that is? They could just say no to her request to stay on, they don't need to manufacture a way to put her off, iyswim? Might there be a genuine business reason for wanting her to do more hours?

She can certainly appeal any decision they make as well.

glad Flowery made it

some stuff on age discrimination

I think they'd like her to go. There are 3 other employees who are aged 65+ and they were not asked to leave, just told they could carry on for as long as they wanted. I think that's why they haven't said no outright.

Thera are 15 hours vacant at the moment and they are sayning they can't recruit for that post as people want more hours so they want to roll the two jobs into one position.