Your Pay Is Wrong or Late: What You Can Actually Do About It

It happens more often than people admit

Pay arrives short. Or it does not arrive at all. Or there is a deduction on the payslip that nobody mentioned. Most people's first instinct is to assume it is their own misunderstanding, wait a month to see if it corrects itself, and only raise it when it happens again.

That instinct costs money, because the time limits for doing anything formal about it are short. Here is what your rights actually are and what to do, in order.

Your right to a payslip

Start here, because you cannot argue about a figure you cannot see. Your employer must give you a payslip on or before payday. It has to show your earnings before and after deductions, and the amount of any deduction that changes each time you are paid, such as tax and National Insurance.

Since April 2019 there is an extra requirement that matters for anyone on variable hours: the payslip must show the number of hours worked where pay varies depending on time worked. That single line is what lets you check an hourly-paid job for underpayment, and an employer who does not provide it is not meeting their obligation.

Fixed deductions can be shown either on the payslip or in a separate written statement given before the first payslip and reissued at least once a year.

What counts as a lawful deduction

Under the Employment Rights Act 1996, an employer can only deduct from your wages where one of the following applies:

• It is required or authorised by law, such as tax and National Insurance
• Your contract specifically allows it, and you have seen that term
• You agreed to it in writing beforehand, for example a trade union subscription
• The employer has mistakenly overpaid you
• You took part in strike or industrial action
• A court has ordered a payment to a third party, or to the employer with your written agreement
• It is part of a salary sacrifice arrangement

Note what is not on that list. An employer cannot deduct for a till shortage, a broken piece of equipment, a customer who did not pay, or training costs, unless there is a contractual term or prior written agreement covering it. "It is company policy" is not one of the grounds.

Retail and hospitality workers should know that there are extra statutory protections in those sectors limiting deductions for cash shortages and stock deficiencies, including a cap on how much can be taken from any one payment. If you are being charged for a till shortage, that is worth raising specifically.

There are also limits on deductions taking you below the National Minimum Wage. Most deductions cannot do that, with specific exceptions including tax, contractual liability, wage advances, overpayment recovery, accommodation and certain voluntary purchases agreed in writing.

Being paid late

Your pay date is a term of your contract. Paying you late is a breach of it, and non-payment or underpayment of wages is potentially an unlawful deduction from wages.

One late payment caused by a bank problem or a payroll error is worth raising and then letting go. A pattern is different, and a pattern usually means the employer has a cash flow problem rather than an administrative one. That is worth knowing about early rather than late.

If the employer becomes insolvent, there is a statutory scheme through the Redundancy Payments Service that can cover certain unpaid wages, holiday pay and notice pay up to set limits. If it gets to that point, get advice from Citizens Advice or Acas rather than trying to work out the forms alone.

What to do, in order

1. Check your own figures first. Hours worked times rate, against the gross on the payslip. Check the tax code has not changed. Check whether a deduction is one you agreed to.
2. Ask payroll in writing. Email, not a corridor conversation. Attach the payslip, name the specific line, and say what you think the correct figure is. Most errors are resolved at this step within a pay run.
3. Escalate to your manager or HR if payroll does not respond within a reasonable time. Reference the earlier email.
4. Raise a formal grievance. Follow whatever procedure your employer has. If they do not have one, follow the Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures. Put it in writing, set out the facts and the figure, and say what outcome you want.
5. Contact Acas. Their helpline is free, and early conciliation is a required step before an employment tribunal claim anyway.

The time limit, which is the bit that catches people

For a claim about an unlawful deduction from wages, the time limit is three months less one day from the date of the deduction. Where there has been a series of deductions, it runs from the last one in the series.

Two further points on the arithmetic:

• You must contact Acas for early conciliation before you can bring a claim. That process pauses the clock, but it does not remove the deadline, so starting it late is still a problem.
• A claim for a series of deductions can generally reach back a maximum of two years. A series can also be broken by a gap of three months or more between deductions, which limits how far back you can go.

The practical effect is that sitting on a problem for four months can turn a straightforward claim into no claim at all. If something is wrong, raise it in the same month.

Keep the evidence as you go

Anyone whose pay is variable, or whose employer has been unreliable once, should keep records without waiting for a problem.

• Your own record of hours worked, noted at the time. A contemporaneous note carries real weight.
• Every payslip, downloaded rather than left on a portal you may lose access to when you leave.
• Rota screenshots, if rotas change after the fact.
• The email trail of anything you have queried.

Download your payslips before you resign. Losing access to the payroll portal on your last day, with an unresolved query outstanding, is a genuinely common and avoidable problem.

Where to get help, all free

Acas for employment rights advice and early conciliation. Citizens Advice for help understanding a payslip or preparing a grievance. Your trade union, if you are a member, because representation at a grievance meeting is one of the main things a union is for. HMRC for anything that is actually a tax code problem rather than an employer problem.

If the underpayment is below the National Minimum Wage, that can also be reported to HMRC, which enforces it and can require an employer to pay arrears.

None of these charge, and none of them require you to have decided to make a claim before you speak to them.

While you sort it out

A short pay packet still has to be survived. Contact anyone you owe money to before you miss a payment rather than after: most lenders and utilities have far more flexibility for someone who rings in advance than for someone who bounces a direct debit. Priority bills, meaning rent, mortgage, council tax and energy, come before credit cards and other unsecured borrowing, because the consequences of falling behind on them are much more serious.

For more on managing the gap, see the guide to UK pay cycles and breaking the paycheck to paycheck cycle. The payday countdown tells you exactly how many days you are stretching across.

This is general information rather than legal advice. For a specific dispute, speak to Acas, Citizens Advice or an employment solicitor.