Final Pay Discrepancy - advice needed please

porg_84

My boyfriend had been off sick with anxiety and depression since Oct 19.

He returned for a short stint back in August '20 (2 weeks reduced hours) but his condition worsened and he went off sick again until the company ultimately terminated his contract via letter effective 04/01/2021.

In the termination letter they advised they would pay 10 weeks in lieu of notice plus any accrued holiday which should have totalled around £5500. 

On receipt of the final payslip there were 2 deductions totalling £2076 marked as unpaid sick & unpaid leave. 

The termination letter did not state there would be any deductions so we questioned these and their response was as follows:

 

Sickness absence has always been processed a month in arrears due to the fact that our system for logging absence was not connected to our system for payroll.  We do this for all employees.

In December you were paid your December salary but the deduction for sickness related to November.

Therefore, at the point of leaving we still needed to reclaim the sickness absence for December which was still to be recovered. 

 

 

His SSP ended in June '20 and last money they actually paid into his account after that was for the days he worked in August, he has not received any payment from them for several months so how that be correct? How can he owe them money he hasn't actually received?

Are they basically saying if he had been fired and he was not entitled to severance then he would owe them that money? I'm so confused we just expected the final payslip to be for the pay in lieu and holiday as he is not entitled to company sick pay or SSP

 

I have refered the matter to ACAS early coliation and have meeting with an employment laywer next week but some advice would help in the interim

 

TIA xx

General_Grant

porg_84 said:

My boyfriend had been off sick with anxiety and depression since Oct 19.

He returned for a short stint back in August '20 (2 weeks reduced hours) but his condition worsened and he went off sick again until the company ultimately terminated his contract via letter effective 04/01/2021.

In the termination letter they advised they would pay 10 weeks in lieu of notice plus any accrued holiday which should have totalled around £5500. 

On receipt of the final payslip there were 2 deductions totalling £2076 marked as unpaid sick & unpaid leave. 

The termination letter did not state there would be any deductions so we questioned these and their response was as follows:

 

Sickness absence has always been processed a month in arrears due to the fact that our system for logging absence was not connected to our system for payroll.  We do this for all employees.

In December you were paid your December salary but the deduction for sickness related to November.

Therefore, at the point of leaving we still needed to reclaim the sickness absence for December which was still to be recovered. 

 

 

His SSP ended in June '20 and last money they actually paid into his account after that was for the days he worked in August, he has not received any payment from them for several months so how that be correct? How can he owe them money he hasn't actually received?

Are they basically saying if he had been fired and he was not entitled to severance then he would owe them that money? I'm so confused we just expected the final payslip to be for the pay in lieu and holiday as he is not entitled to company sick pay or SSP

 

I have refered the matter to ACAS early coliation and have meeting with an employment laywer next week but some advice would help in the interim

 

TIA xx

As they dismissed him they should pay his contractual notice pay and holiday accrued but not taken.  This is at his full contractual rate of pay.  But they could have said that his holiday should be taken during the notice period.

If he hasn't received any sickness pay in recent months then there can be nothing to deduct.

Xbigman

It's always worth checking these things as mistakes do get made but I suspect your employer is correct. 

I was off sick starting in October and I get full sick pay. My October wage slip was normal pay. My November wage slip was sick pay but it was the sick pay for Oct. The months pay after I return to work will be the last of the sick pay. It's all running a month behind.
In the case of you boyfriend he should have received full normal pay the first month he was sick and then been running a month behind. The problem is that the adjustment for the first month would have been more than the SSP he received and his wage would have been negative. In those circumstances the employer usually catches up with the pay discrepancy on return to work. As your boyfriend never returned and did a full month they have deducted the money owing from his final holiday pay. The way they have reported this on his wage slip has confused the issue but it looks like it could be correct. 
Go through his wage slips and check if he was paid a full months pay the month he went sick.

Darren

General_Grant

Xbigman said:

It's always worth checking these things as mistakes do get made but I suspect your employer is correct. 

I was off sick starting in October and I get full sick pay. My October wage slip was normal pay. My November wage slip was sick pay but it was the sick pay for Oct. The months pay after I return to work will be the last of the sick pay. It's all running a month behind.
In the case of you boyfriend he should have received full normal pay the first month he was sick and then been running a month behind. The problem is that the adjustment for the first month would have been more than the SSP he received and his wage would have been negative. In those circumstances the employer usually catches up with the pay discrepancy on return to work. As your boyfriend never returned and did a full month they have deducted the money owing from his final holiday pay. The way they have reported this on his wage slip has confused the issue but it looks like it could be correct. 
Go through his wage slips and check if he was paid a full months pay the month he went sick.

Darren

Basically the OP's BF has been on sick leave for over a year with the exception of a short return on reduced hours in August.  So I don't see how he would have been paid SSP in late 2020.

Savvy_Sue

Has he checked the bank account into which his salary is normally paid? Not wanting to be critical, but it always astonishes me how many people 'never noticed' a salary payment made in error, because they 'never check' their bank statements. 

Xbigman

General_Grant said:

Xbigman said:

It's always worth checking these things as mistakes do get made but I suspect your employer is correct. 

I was off sick starting in October and I get full sick pay. My October wage slip was normal pay. My November wage slip was sick pay but it was the sick pay for Oct. The months pay after I return to work will be the last of the sick pay. It's all running a month behind.
In the case of you boyfriend he should have received full normal pay the first month he was sick and then been running a month behind. The problem is that the adjustment for the first month would have been more than the SSP he received and his wage would have been negative. In those circumstances the employer usually catches up with the pay discrepancy on return to work. As your boyfriend never returned and did a full month they have deducted the money owing from his final holiday pay. The way they have reported this on his wage slip has confused the issue but it looks like it could be correct. 
Go through his wage slips and check if he was paid a full months pay the month he went sick.

Darren

Basically the OP's BF has been on sick leave for over a year with the exception of a short return on reduced hours in August.  So I don't see how he would have been paid SSP in late 2020.

My point is that the extra months pay he received was not dealt with by SSP. When the SSP ran out the employer just waited for the final wage slip and then took back the overpayment. 

Darren

Undervalued

SSP only lasts for 26 weeks. Once it ran out the employer should normally have issued him with a notice and suggesting that he may be entitled to claim whatever has replaced ESA. (Sorry I am getting a bit out of date)!

Any company sick pay would depend on his terms and conditions of employment. However, these days it is rare for company sick pay to be a hard and fast contractual entitlement. Normally is is "discretionary" and any "entitlement" is little more than a guide rather than a right. Legally discretion is quite wide providing it is not so far off as to be perverse!

An employer is quite entitled to claw back any accidental overpayment.

Obviously see what your lawyer says once they have all the information. If you have not done so it may be worth setting out as clearly as possible what has been paid and when and emailing that to the lawyer along with his contract and any relevant parts of his employee handbook or similar documents.

Manxman_in_exile

As someone else has suggested, the only sensible way to approach this is to look at the payslips.  Start with the pay period before absence started and work forwards to the latest (last) payslip.  Compare what he actually was paid to what he should have been paid.  It's only by understanding what has actually happened that you'll have any chance of challenging this - assuming something is wrong... )

(Well, you ought to be able to ask his employer for this breakdown as well - but they may not be cooperative)