Redundancy pay - weekly pay calculation

kineas

Hi Everyone,

I've been made redundant recently and I left early as I had found another job and my employer still paid me a redundancy package which consisted of redundancy pay and compensation, but no payment in lieu of notice due to leaving early.

My employers HR department gave me a figure of what I was going to be paid, and it was all worked out based on my weekly pay and being there for 5 years. When I got a letter from the pensions department, it was £600 less than what HR had told me. When I contacted them, they said that it was due to having a salary sacrifice for childcare vouchers. HR had given me a figure without taking the SS into account as they don't know about it, whereas the final figure calculated by pensions is after the SS. I thought this wasn't right, but accepted it and I've had the money paid into my account.

I've been chasing my final childcare voucher as it wasn't showing in my online account. Turns out, when I've handed in my notice, the child care vouchers were automatically cancelled despite still having payment due for my final month with the company. So now I've got to pay an additional £100 to my childcare provider which the vouchers usually covered.

So now I'm a little confused. If my redundancy package was calculated on a weekly pay after the sacrifice, should this have been the case if the sacrifice was cancelled? I'm going to call them on Monday but I'd like to know where I stand with this.

Thanks!

getmore4less

The "weeks pay" is defined in the employment act.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/18/part/XIV/chapter/II

221. may be relevant
Subject to section 222, if the employee’s remuneration for employment in normal working hours (whether by the hour or week or other period) does not vary with the amount of work done in the period, the amount of a week’s pay is the amount which is payable by the employer under the contract of employment in force on the calculation date if the employee works throughout his normal working hours in a week

The "calculation date" is discussed further down(225,226) and that will be relevant as I am not sure if it is related to the notice date or termination date without working through the references back to redundancy/termination.

Did you work some of your notice?


For redundancy there is a cap so if you are over that and the company pays more it becomes contractual and they can use whatever calculation they want as long as it gives you more.

kineas

I did work some of my notice. They told me I was being made redundant 6 months ago, and I left 5 weeks before my redundancy date.

The only difference in my final pay slip is that they deducted 2 days pay as I left 24th February but that shouldn't affect my weekly pay?

It just seems like they have 2 figures that the can base they calculation on, my weekly pay or my weekly pay minus my salary sacrifice and they chose the smallest figure. This is despite the fact that my final month's salary wasn't sacrificed. I understand that they may have calculated it before my sacrifice was cancelled, but they're saying it was cancelled when I requested to leave early which is when they would have then calculated it.

I worked in a school, and it's been a battle as my school has wanted to pay me but the local authority has seemed reluctant to. My school were happy to pay the full figure, and then the pensions department have scooped £600 of it away. So where has that money gone? Has pensions taken it?