Overpayment of wages

What is the legal position on deductions from wages? One of my members, a part-time nurse has just been given a pay slip showing an additional deduction of £100. She has been told that she has been overpaid for more than a year and now owes the employer over £1,000. She has had a number of changes to her hours over the last year and this made it impossible for her to know that she was being overpaid. Surely it is unreasonable for her employer to make these deductions?

It is exceptional for an employer to make the kind of pay adjustment your member has experienced without first having consulted with the employee and agreed a fair method of repaying any money overpaid.

Although in law a person should normally repay any overpayment, the employer has to act reasonably. As a minimum, this would mean staging any deductions over a sufficiently long period so as not to cause the employee financial difficulties.

Given the changes your member has experienced in her income over recent months, it ought even to be possible to argue that her employer has no right to reclaim the money incorrectly paid to her. This would be the case if she was led to believe she had an entitlement to be paid that amount and as a result had adjusted her spending. This would potentially make the recovery unfair.

* More information: LRD booklet, Law at work 2003