claiming back overpayent whilst on sick pay

wilf55

my daughter has been on sick since feb during this time she has been overpaid by work she then got marching orders due to not complying with sickness policy and then had got months notice

this would have meant that she was due £1068 but cos she was overpaid they have just took this of that amount she is still sick

i thought that they couldnt take an overpayment back whilst she was on sick is this true

thanks

Savvy_Sue

ACAS should be able to advise, but I don't see why they shouldn't be able to take back an overpayment just because she's on sick leave. If she was likely to go back then a friendly employer might be willing to discuss recovering the overpayment in monthly instalments, but as she's not, it doesn't seem unreasonable to recover it from her final or almost final salary.

Don't know if it will help, but you do still accrue entitlement to holiday pay even when you're on sick leave, so I think she would be due some holiday pay if she hadn't taken any in her current leave year before going sick.

Jarvisma

This is correct. There is no legal prevention from recovering an overpayment either made or discovered while someone is sick and they are also entitled to deduct the full amount from her final salary payment.

What Sue has said is the general rule, most companies would be willing to accept a reasonable amount of installments to recover an overpayment, but I think now that the amount has been recovered it would be nigh on impossible to persuade them to return the overpaid amounts and allow her to repay it in installments.

You should definitely check the holiday situation though to ensure she has been paid for any untaken. Also I would suggest just checking the overpayment was indeed that. Did it come about because she was paid in full while off sick when she was only supposed to recieve SSP? If that's the case maybe check her contract to make sure there was no entitlement to company sick pay.