I have an issue at work and I want to get some information from people more knowledgeable than myself before committing to a course of action. What I know about employment law could be written on a pinhead. I have a job that involves some site work, and in the past my team got to use our own private cars to travel around and we were paid a monthly private car supplement and got to claim for business mileage on top - all very straightforward and a nice little earner. Then in January 2011 our team merged with another with the upshot being that we had to start carrying tools. Corporate wouldn't allow us to carry tools in private vehicles so we all got liveried vans with fuel cards and the private car payments and mileage claims stopped.
Except it didn't for me. My team leader told me in October of this year that they'd only just realised they were still paying me the private car supplement and it was going to stop immediately. I had no problem with that, I didn't know they were still paying it (I realise this is borderline negligence on my part, I should be paying more attention to whats on my payslip, but I figured all the adjustments had been made as my nett pay dropped significantly when we moved into the vans) and over the last couple of months I've adjusted to my lower pay packet.
Today I got home to a letter from Payroll saying they want the overpayment back. In full. Now, I don't have a problem with this necessarily (although it wasn't my fault that they kept paying it) but they're only giving me the option of paying it back over 3, 6 or 12 months. I find this very unfair as I'll be paying back more each month than they ever overpaid me each month. There's no way I can afford the 3 or 6 month option, and to be honest now I've just had the overpayment taken off me I'm finding things tight as it is, if they deduct 1/12 of the total overpayment each month I will really stuggle to make it through the month.
So my questions are: am I legally obliged to pay it back? if so do I really only have 12 months to pay it back or could I spread it over the next few years (I work for a public company in Scotland, so there's no culture of enforced retirement just now. Job security is solid so it's not like I'm going to up and leave over something like this)
Anyone got any info for me before I respond to this letter? as it is I plan to ask for more time to pay it back and see what they say but the whole matter is frustrating because other than scrutinising my paypacket in more detail those first few months back in 2011 when they changed things I don't feel there was a whole lot I could have done about it.
Except it didn't for me. My team leader told me in October of this year that they'd only just realised they were still paying me the private car supplement and it was going to stop immediately. I had no problem with that, I didn't know they were still paying it (I realise this is borderline negligence on my part, I should be paying more attention to whats on my payslip, but I figured all the adjustments had been made as my nett pay dropped significantly when we moved into the vans) and over the last couple of months I've adjusted to my lower pay packet.
Today I got home to a letter from Payroll saying they want the overpayment back. In full. Now, I don't have a problem with this necessarily (although it wasn't my fault that they kept paying it) but they're only giving me the option of paying it back over 3, 6 or 12 months. I find this very unfair as I'll be paying back more each month than they ever overpaid me each month. There's no way I can afford the 3 or 6 month option, and to be honest now I've just had the overpayment taken off me I'm finding things tight as it is, if they deduct 1/12 of the total overpayment each month I will really stuggle to make it through the month.
So my questions are: am I legally obliged to pay it back? if so do I really only have 12 months to pay it back or could I spread it over the next few years (I work for a public company in Scotland, so there's no culture of enforced retirement just now. Job security is solid so it's not like I'm going to up and leave over something like this)
Anyone got any info for me before I respond to this letter? as it is I plan to ask for more time to pay it back and see what they say but the whole matter is frustrating because other than scrutinising my paypacket in more detail those first few months back in 2011 when they changed things I don't feel there was a whole lot I could have done about it.
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