Retirement — the clock and the party when you’re 65 — is beginning to feel a bit out of date. I’ve long wanted it phased out, so that we can each negotiate our way out of the workforce in our own good time. How much better it would be if we could decide for ourselves how much energy and passion for work we still have. We all have different levels of skill and enthusiasm, and we all age at different rates. What has the number 65 got to do with it? Precious little.

Now at last there is the immediate prospect of change — and on several fronts at the same time. The Government’s new strategy for dealing with an ageing society tells us that it will to bring forward a review of the Default Retirement Age to 2010. Economic circumstances make this pressing. Retired people desperately need to work to augment their pensions. And there is nothing like financial need to prompt people into speaking out. Older voices are finally being heard and their opinions considered. This is nowhere demonstrated better than in the two cases before the courts this week. Government decisions hang on the outcome.

The first has been dragging its way through the courts since 2006. Age Concern challenged a British law that was intended to introduce an EU directive against discrimination, arguing that it manifestly fails to do so. The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 give an employee approaching retirement at 65 the right to ask to work beyond that age. The employer is duty bound to consider the request, but can refuse without giving any explanation. This was seen as progress. In practice, it means that give or take a desultory exchange of views, the age of retirement stays at 65.

Age Concern lost its case in the UK, and in March this year its appeal to the European Court of Justice was rejected and referred back here for a final decision. The legal process has been sluggish and unrewarding. But today this appeal reaches the High Court.

Age Concern and Help the Aged have been piling on the pressure and evidence continues to mount that it is a change that the British public wants. Some 25,000 people are forced out of work at the age of 65 each year. Three hundred employment tribunal appeals are on hold awaiting this decision. The time is ripe for change.

This week a 68-year-old solicitor, Leslie Seldon, also brought a test appeal against his forced retirement at 65 from the law firm where he had worked for 35 years. He lost at an employment tribunal, and the Employment Appeal Tribunal found that it was lawful for his employers to insist that he retired to allow younger solicitors a better prospect of becoming partners. Mr Seldon went higher. His is the first individual challenge to reach the Court of Appeal.

It is the doggedness of such people as Mr Seldon that will drive change forward. It is a tribute to his determination and resourcefulness that he has persisted thus far. Surely with these two cases being heard in our courts we can expect some movement in this stubborn law.

That said, I believe that there is a huge addendum to this process. Even if the law changes, all is not plain sailing. Those fit and lively people in their Sixties may rejoice that their working lives have been extended, that they are still part of the mainstream of society, that the extra cash will help out. But there will be concerns elsewhere. Plenty of younger workers don’t want to face the future that lies ahead. They haven’t really taken on board that you cannot have a population living on into their Eighties and beyond, contributing nothing to the economy and expecting the shrinking numbers of workers to support them. All they see is the short-term prospect of their elders blocking promotion and hogging the top jobs. It is one reason why the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills opposes Mr Seldon’s case.

This is a criticism that the old need to answer, if only because an important social shift of this nature calls for a consensus among all working people. A revolution in the composition of the working population is on the horizon. We are bound to see more age-diverse workplaces, with the old working alongside the youngest recruits and mid-career managers. Patterns of work will be transformed. It will not simply be a crescendo of achievement, reaching a peak and remaining on a high all the way to the clock and the party. Those in top jobs with big responsibilities cannot expect and, indeed, will not be able to shoulder important workloads simply for as long as they feel inclined.

It would be fair for a company to worry if its senior management began to grow tired, lose concentration, find it hard to keep up with technology and current thinking. So there needs to be a way for older workers to reconfigure their career trajectory to accommodate a shift down the hierarchy, without loss of self-esteem or respect from others.

If we all do this, there will be no sense of decline, merely the shifting patterns that already affect other aspects of our lives.

People in the media are already familiar with what it feels like. I have long been working with broadcasting producers younger than my children. They know more about the technology, they understand the latest modes of delivery, and have more patience to tangle with knotty corporate structures than I have. What matters is our respective skills.

This is what will happen in other more traditional jobs: offices, clinics, warehouses, retail outlets, import-export businesses — they will all have a wider age span among their employees. The social spin-off will benefit everyone. Generations will find it easier to understand each other, and with understanding will come sympathy. This is the unexplored landscape that stretches before us.

The question now is “how”, not “when”, official retirement will be phased out.

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