Hi guys.

Been having an ongoing issue with my current employer with me not being paid correctly over the last two months.

I work a job with a "zero hour contract" but most of the time i end up working at least 40 hours, it's not the most glamourous of jobs but it pays the bills, i get just over minimum wage £6.59 @ over 25.

The way holidays work with the company i work for is you accrue holidays @ 12% of your worked hours each week and as of end of june i had accrued just over 100 hours holiday entitlement since march.

When we request holidays we can request either an amount of days or an amount of hours to be paid within that holiday period.

As per company policies i submitted a holiday request form for one week in june and one week in july.

Both of these i requested to be paid 50 hours holiday pay for however neither was paid, after contacting my companies payroll department and financial controller on the most recent pay date 3 weeks ago today:jaw: they advised me they had no evidence of the holiday request form beign received, as the site i work at held a carbon copy of both these holiday request forms i was told that as soon as they received these carbon copies they would be able to sort out the missing pay and send me a cheque, they received these carbon copies over two weeks ago and have still failed to pay me this missing pay.

i spoke to the payroll department today who basically said theyve been "too busy" to sort it out but haven't forgotten about it, but because my next payday is now only a week away that i should just wait and have it paid to me in my next pay packet.

As i pointed out, it's not as simple as that as when i took the time off i expected to be paid for the holidays i was entitled too, and as such had budgeted my months expenditure around receiving this pay and not receiving a quarter of my pay over two months has lead to me having to borrow money off family in order to meet expenditure and has also lead to me incurrring bank charges...

After the long explanation - i simply have one question is it possible for me to claim back bank charges from my employer if them not paying me correctly has lead to me incurring bank charges or to financial hardship?

If you have incurred genuine bank charges or interest charges due to your employer's failure to act on your correctly completed holiday request form, then yes, you can request that your employer reimburse you for any costs or charges they have caused.

And 'too busy' doesn't cut it. Imagine if they used that excuse to delay paying their bills!

The failure to pay holiday pay would amount to an Unlawful Deduction from wages, and if it were any other form of deduction - for example if it was made when you left employment - you would be entitled to take action through an Employment Tribunal. The Et would then award damages which put you back in the position that you would have been in had the deduction not been paid, ie an order to the employer to repay the deduction. Your claim in that case could legitimately include any out of pocket expenses caused by the unlawful deduction, such as bank charges

Your situation is little different - you could in theory make a complaint to an ET, but of course the employer would (hopefully) have remedied the failure to pay holiday pay even before the claim was processed by the ET, so there is little point in making such a claim, but the fact remains that their failure has caused you additional expenses which would not have occurred had they correctly processed your holiday application.

Get this in as a formal written grievance. Complain to the head of HR, or the most appropriate senior manager outlining the fact that you booked the holiday correctly in line with policy, you clearly stated the request to be paid the 50 hours per week taken and this was accepted by the company. The failure to pay caused significant hardship and additional expenses which would not have been the case had the forms been correctly actioned, and instead of making good straight away the matter has still not been resolved. You do not accept that there should have been a further delay due to Payroll being too busy to correct the error and now make a formal request for the 100 hours accrued holiday pay to be paid without further delay, and whilst you accept that this may be on the next payday, you are not prepared to accept any further delay beyond that point. You also enclose a breakdown of charges incurred as a direct result of not being paid correctly and expect for this amount also to be paid to put you back in the financial position that you would have been had the holiday request been processed correctly.