Overpayment - advice needed please!

newbutold

hellopigeon wrote: »

Thanks for all the advice! Although I’m kind of even more unsure about it all now 😂

I know I am partly to blame for not keeping a personal note of when I work, i really do. I’ve been in contact with one of the managers who is coming to see me tomorrow to discuss the overpayment. I did ask by email what was happening with my pay this month and if I could at least be given a pay slip so I can work out what I have left to pay and she told me she wasn’t prepared to discuss it over email which made me kind of nervous because... why would she not be able to tell me by email?! I literally feel like I’m some kind of thief who’s about to be completely shamed tomorrow morning!! No idea what to expect. Sigh!

Personally I would be taking someone with me to the meeting tomorrow!

Manxman_in_exile

In the trust I worked for we had loads of overpayments (including one to myself!).


I would have expected them to agree a repayment plan over at least the number of months you have been overpaid. (ie overpaid for four months then repay over at least four months). Yes you have to repay it, but they should not be demanding it in one go.


Personally, I'd be wanting an explanation as to how the overpayment has arisen. Assuming this relates to a "bank" contract (and assuming you haven't fraudulently claimed extra hours) somebody in a supervisory capacity must have authorised you to be paid - that's where the fault lies. (I'm making a lot of assumptions here but in my experience most NHS overpayments arise from system/process errors, and not due to any fault on the employee.)


Hope the meeting goes well for you and you have a union rep. In my trust they were experts on overpayments! Please update on what happens.


(EDIT: reminds me a bit of a thread earlier this year. A NHS employee was threatened with disciplinary action after they had accessed patient details they should not have done. After help from other posters on here it was confirmed that someone in IT who was responsible for allocating "profiles" to members of staff, allowing access to different levels of patient information, had allocated the wrong profile to this member of staff. Went from a possible disciplinary to thanks for identifying a process error. The trust could tighten its processes. That's why I would want (or even demand) to know how this overpayment arose.


Also, the pros and cons of union membership are often discussed here. I would always join a union. Whilst I accept that unions are not always as helpful as could or should be, overpayments are an area where they probably know as much as the pay clerks.)