Overpayment recovery

[Peanutsear]

Hi folks. I've had some great advice from here in the past.

Unfortunately I am back for more, if there is any knowledgeable person about in the field of Employment, HR or Payroll I think.

Back story.

My partner and I work for an emergency service here in the UK. (Not sure if which one makes a difference)

In 2017 we had our first child and my partner went off having been on a full time wage. Following Maternity she came back and went part time. During maternity there were a few issues about her not getting the correct payments and having to chase people for BACS transfers to resolve. No massive issues.

Roll on 2020 we have child no2 and she returns after maternity in Feb 2021 to a new PT role. Pretty much as soon as she went back she got a maternity overpayment bill of approximately £1200 which was paid back over the next 8-10 months or so.

In September 2021 she moved to a new role. She remains in this role.Between the February - September she had a time in service pay increase, and September public sector pay rise and her new role attracts unsocial hours payments.

Roll on today an email drops into her email box from a payroll officer. Stating
"I'm writing to inform you of a recent change that was made to the contractual hours on your record which has resulted in a severe overpayment" (We have sought clarity on what this means)

The email goes on to say the figure is over £4000 which needs to be paid back as soon as practicable.

"the best option I have available to you so that we can recoup, without the need to create an invoice is as follows" (No idea what the significance of an invoice is)

"To deduct the overpayment from your record over a maximum of 16months at a cost of £260ish per month starting from March"

Followed by I'm sure its a bit of shock type text and contact me to discuss any concerns.

Signed off with words to the effect of can you please respond ASAP otherwise I will look to set up the recovery without your prior authorisation.

**I want to say that if this is all correct we have no issue paying her money back, it's public money**

However this is going to cause us significant hardship.
We have had no evidence of workings out etc.
This is the second time the organisation has got it wrong in relation to her pay.

Our question is here.

Where do we stand with this organisations inability to get it correct?

Can we challenge the amount to pay it back should this be found correct?

My partner is beside herself with worry which has been caused by our employer again.
Do we have any legal standing regarding these errors?

We are completely lost at the moment and pending some contact coming back from payroll, we don't know where to turn.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated. Even if its not the news we want to hear. We would rather know what is happening is correct.

Thank you in advance

N

[ULA]

Hi Peanutsear sorry to hear that you have had to come back to the forum for further advice.

In regard to this situation unfortunately for your partner, this is one area covered by legislation that allows an employer to recover overpayment of salary and to make reasonable arrangements for this to be repaid via deductions from salary.

That said, merely sending your partner an email saying they owe £4k without any explanation of how this happened together with a breakdown of the figures to justify the figure being claimed has been overpaid, is not a reasonable way for them to go about getting agreement from your partner to have the deductions made.

I would suggest that in the first instance your partner acknowledges receipt of the email, explain that this is the second time that payroll have incorrectly administered salary and that is is extremely disappointing that this has occurred again. Emphasise that there is a willingness to consider a reasonable and affordable amount to be deducted to recover the overpayment, however before this can be done a full breakdown of the figures that make up this £4k is required, an explanation of why this has happened again and an assurance that this will not happen in the future.

See what they then come back with.

Hope this helps but if you have any further questions as this progresses please just come back to this thread.

[Peanutsear]

ULA thank you for the reply. It's helpful to know there maybe some wiggle room for negotiation on repayment but as you mention we have had nothing in relation to a breakdown of how the overpayments have been incurred. Nothing as to when it dates back to and what mechanisms in the systems that made happen. (Human or IT).

We can't be sure if the workings out sent to us are correct.

I don't think it's reasonable to pay back over 4k without the required evidence etc.

Like I mentioned we have no issues returning the money if found to be correct. Its just not fair they have made a mistake with maternity pay and now returning to work pay.

In line with your advice we have requested evidence and breakdowns. We will then enter negotiations to resolve the matter.

Much appreciated.

N

[Manxman]

First question as your partner works in an emergency service: is she in a union and if so, has she sought their advice? I ask because overpayments are very common in the public sector and if she's in a union they will probably have a lot of experience dealing with overpayments from her employer.

I'm a former NHS manager and have experience of dealing with overpayments - both recovering them and repaying them myself(!).

I agree with the comments from ULA and would emphasise the following:

1. I'm surprised you've received an overpayment letter amounting to £4k without a detailed breakdown. The NHS trust I worked for would never send out such a letter without a detailed breakdown, and I always thought you were contractually entitled to receive one. (I might be mistaken about the contrcatually bit but it's obviously unreasonable to expect you to agree to a repayment plan without knowing the details of how you've been overpaid. For the nHS it might have been a legacy from the old Whitley council terms but it would depend what emergency service she's in).

2. The ususal NHS practice regarding recovery was that you should be allowed a similar time to repay an overpayment to that over which it accrued. So if you were overpaid for a period of six months you should be allowed to repay it over a period of six months.

16 months sounds quite generous, but you need to know how long she was being overpaid for. If it was over 24 months you should fight to get the repayment plan extended to 24 months the same as the overpayment period.

3. You say she's received an email as follows: "I'm writing to inform you of a recent change that was made to the contractual hours on your record which has resulted in a severe overpayment" (We have sought clarity on what this means)

If I were your partner I'd check my last year or so payslips to make sure that my contracted and worked hours on my payslip are in agreement with whatever my contrcated hours are. And I'd check that my contrcated hours are what I think they are...

I'm a bit surprised that "a recent change to contrcatual hours" would result in an overpayment amounting to as much as £4000. She might want to check her bank account just to make sure there isn't a lot more in it than she thinks there is. And that isn't a criticism of her, by the way, it's just an observation. I have known cases where people have sworn they didn't notice an overpayment until they checked their account and realised there was a lot more in there then they expected.

4. I personally checked the detail on my NHS payslip every month. I would advise all public sector workers to do so as overpayments (and underpayments) are notoriously common in the public sector. In particular, always do so after a change of hours, change of grade or any other contrcatual change.

5. Is the overpaid amount stated as a gross amount or a net amount? If the £4k is a gross amount then the actual net amount that will be recovered from her will be significantly less. (That's because during the period that she was being overpaid she will have been overpaying tax and NI so she will get these back).

Good luck.