Do I have to pay back overpaid wages?

[cupcakeandtea]

I left a local NHS trust at the end of Jan as my contract had ended. I'm now on mat leave but I'm only able to claim maternity allowance from the government.

I had a letter from the NHS Trust stating I owe them £200 as they overpaid me in January. Am I legally obliged to pay this back as it's their mistake, not mine.

I really don't mind paying it back but it's slightly galling that I don't have a great deal of money and I did inform them that I would be leaving on the 25th of the month so there may be some overlap with pay.

Yes you do.

You do I'm afraid but only within your budget. I was overpaid when I returned after having ds1. They paid me full time for a part time role and when I called to tell them they refused to let me repay because "there was no error".

10 months later they came for it and attempted to take it all in one month! We came to an agreement whereby they hadn't back over a year.

Sorry, but yes. They'll have an overpayment policy in place. You can negotiate not to pay it all back in one go though if it would cause financial hardship. From my experience of a recent NHS overpayment it may take a while from the letter to inform you that you've been overpayed to actually paying it back.

Yes you do

But you would expect them to pay you if you were underpaid surely???
Why should you have money you haven't earnt

All right kilmuir the OP was just asking

I don't have a problem with paying it back because it wasn't mine to spend. What I do have a problem with is me alerting payroll this might happen in advance but them still overpaying me anyway.

Don't know about anywhere else but NHS payroll departments seem to take ages when dealing with overpayments. My recent one had me telling them straight away but it took nearly 5 months for them to officially request me to pay it back. And that was with me chasing them.

And after it was paid I still got a letter 2 months later informing me they had 'just' discovered an overpayment that would collected from my next months salary .

If you're able to I would just put the money to the side until they give you the date to pay it back (if they haven't yet).