overpayment of salary, left employment

claire21

Hi, I hope someone can help.

I was employed as a civil servant. I went on an unpaid career break for around 18 months and gave my date of return to work as 30 sept 2006, however i decided not to return so i left employment on that date.

I have now recevied a letter stating Human resources did not inform Pay Section that i left employment on that date and they paid me wages until the pay system was updated by them on 28 Feb 2007. I have consequently been overpaid from 2 Oct 2006 to 28 Feb 2007. The amount being £2638.

The letter goes on to state;
I need to show that the overpayment is being recovered because overpayments are a loss of public funds and under Governement accounting rules i have to ensure that repayment is made asap.
Please pay in full or send written proposals for installments.

To add insult the letter was sent to an old address in March 2007 and i didnt get it. They have now checked their records and see i had moved and informed them so sent it to my new address. So the systems in place seem really poor.

Where do i stand considering i was no longer employed by them when they paid me?

I didnt notice i was being paid until jan 07 as at that time i had a lot of transactions in and out of my account.

Many thanks.

wacko911

Legally I think you have to repay the money. However I think you can more or less arrange the terms, ie £10 a month

floss2

I think your contract probably states that if overpaid, you have to repay, but check it first.

Then work out what you have received by going through your bank statements, and then work out what you can afford to pay back each month.

Probably not the response you wanted, eh?!

JohnInDebt

You have to repay the money.

Can you honestly say you didn't notice the extra money going into your account regularly and just hoped no one would notice???

If you didn't notice this money then surely it's still sat there?

Kevicho

claire21 wrote: »

Hi, I hope someone can help.

I was employed as a civil servant. I went on an unpaid career break for around 18 months and gave my date of return to work as 30 sept 2006, however i decided not to return so i left employment on that date.

I have now recevied a letter stating Human resources did not inform Pay Section that i left employment on that date and they paid me wages until the pay system was updated by them on 28 Feb 2007. I have consequently been overpaid from 2 Oct 2006 to 28 Feb 2007. The amount being £2638.

The letter goes on to state;
I need to show that the overpayment is being recovered because overpayments are a loss of public funds and under Governement accounting rules i have to ensure that repayment is made asap.
Please pay in full or send written proposals for installments.

To add insult the letter was sent to an old address in March 2007 and i didnt get it. They have now checked their records and see i had moved and informed them so sent it to my new address. So the systems in place seem really poor.

Where do i stand considering i was no longer employed by them when they paid me?

I didnt notice i was being paid until jan 07 as at that time i had a lot of transactions in and out of my account.

Many thanks.

Hi Claire, i think what others are saying is correct, you have been overpaid and have requirement to pay it back.
It doesnt come as a surprise that government systems are poor, so I would write back and ask for this to be taken into consideration (ie no interest etc added).

I would send them a letter with an amount you can comfortably pay back each month, if they dispute this then a debt charity such as CCCs or payplan may be able to help negotiations.

But i wouldnt worry too much about possible legal action or a DCA becoming involved as long as you get back in touch and make an offer, as really this is there error, but there is still the point that you should have noticed the money going in (i mean on bank statements the incoming funds are in a totally different column to the outgoing funds) so they wouldnt see that as much of an excuse.

I hope this helps and all parties can come to an agreeable arrangement

Lizalu

JohnInDebt wrote: »

You have to repay the money.

Can you honestly say you didn't notice the extra money going into your account regularly and just hoped no one would notice???

If you didn't notice this money then surely it's still sat there?

I agree with this. How could you not have noticed this amount of extra money? And when you did realise didn't you phone your ex work to find out why you'd been paid? Surely you haven't spent any money that you didn't earn?

claire21

Regarding why i didnt notice the money going in to my account:

It was around £400 a month.

At that time i had just sold a house for £300,000 and was renovating another with that money. I was paying thousands and thousands into my current account from various other accounts each month making around 20 transactions a month and along with all the other income going in to my account i didnt notice the wages. I was project managing the renovations and writing 30 cheques out a month.

So, no i didnt notice £400 in the scheme of things.

Thanks for the advice though.

JohnInDebt

claire21 wrote: »

Regarding why i didnt notice the money going in to my account:

It was around £400 a month.

At that time i had just sold a house for £300,000 and was renovating another with that money. I was paying thousands and thousands into my current account from various other accounts each month making around 20 transactions a month and along with all the other income going in to my account i didnt notice the wages. I was project managing the renovations and writing 30 cheques out a month.

So, no i didnt notice £400 in the scheme of things.

Thanks for the advice though.

Regardless of whether it was noticed or not, it will have to be paid back.

However, they cannot expect it back in one lump sum. Offer them what you can comfortably afford to pay back each month.

claire21

JohnInDebt wrote: »

Regardless of whether it was noticed or not, it will have to be paid back.

However, they cannot expect it back in one lump sum. Offer them what you can comfortably afford to pay back each month.

Thanks.
I wasnt trying to say that as i hadnt noticed it i shouldnt pay it back. I was just trying to clarify my position as some people seemed to think i was being untruthfull when i said i hadnt noticed it.

I was just looking for the legal position on the debt, not what i should have been doing. The opinion is that i am liable. Thanks.

PS Yes i have spent the money along with my other savings.

rog2

Hi Claire - I'm sure that they will accept re-payment over a prolonged period, so that you don't have to pay more than you can afford. After all, they were at least partly to blame for the overpayment.
Good luck.

claire21

Thanks all. I will make an installment offer