Late timesheet: can HR dock pay?

[eloise11]

DS had a casual job for a few days over the Summer. He provided info about his hours to a manager each day but was supposed in fact to complete a timesheet as well. HR then wrote to him saying that if he didn't get it in within a couple of days, £100.00 would be deducted from his pay. (He won't in fact be earning very much more than that.)

However, the timesheet itself says that if it's not submitted on time, payroll will simply run the following month.

As HR sent the email to someone else in error (who realized that it was for DS and eventually forwarded it to him), there was a delay of a couple of days.

I except that DS may not be paid for another month but could HR, notwithstanding its mistake in sending the email elsewhere initially, really take £100.00 off when there's nothing on any paperwork (timesheet/contract/anywhere) to indicate that this is their practice?

Ours dock pay for late time sheets but usually not that much. We get quartered for it but it's in our contracts that we get quartered if they're late.

A little confused maybe my work have a different policy and work differently. I work in a HR department.

At the council I work casual workers submit time sheets for the actual hours they have worked, e.g if the work work 9-5 with a half hour break they claim 7.5 hours, if the time sheet is not in hr on time then they simply get paid on the next available payroll. How can he take £100 off if he hasn't necessarily worked any hours therefore not getting paid?

Maybe I'm thinking of different casual but at my work casual have no obligation to work and we have no obligation to offer them hours so they fill in time sheets letting he know there hours, with it being a council we cant contact every single person that's not handed in a time sheet as we wouldn't know if they were meant that week as don't know if they have worked also it would be impossible with the amount of casual workers xxxx

When I used to employ casual staff who submitted time sheets, hr told me that I could dock pay if it was circumstances I had told them in writing would lead to pay being docked. However, the maximum by which I could dock it was to reduce the hourly pay rate to the national minimum wage so if someone had earned not much more than £100 I would not be allowed to deduct £100 (not that I would have, I wasn't that draconian) - but if they had done 10 hours at a rate £1 more than nmw per hour I could dock £10 it it was warranted.

No, unless he has agreed to it, it's an unlawful deduction from wages. His HR dept are acting disgracefully.

hr told me that I could dock pay if it was circumstances I had told them in writing would lead to pay being docked

Eh - you can't just randomly decide what someone's hourly rate is.

I think Fish means HR agreed that docking pay for X is legal, as long as the employees have been told in writing that X will result in their pay being docked.

And then as a separate point, that any docking can't take you below minimum wage. So you cannot dock the pay of someone on minimum wage, and if they are on more than that, you cannot dock their pay to less than minimum wage for the hours that they worked.

AnchorDownDeepBreath is correct in interpreting what I meant to say.