[Scotland] Payroll error gives overtime pay to hundreds of police officers

Hundreds of police officers in Scotland have received more than £40,000 of overtime wages as the result of a payroll error, Glasgow Times reports.

589 members of Police Scotland staff and officers were paid for public holiday shifts due to confusion caused by irregular shift patterns over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to reporting by The Scottish Sun

The error was discovered during an internal audit and was described as “high risk” in a report by financial chiefs

Data analyst Andrew Diffin said, “We are confident that we have identified everything within the data set that’s potentially erroneous.

“The valuation we’ve placed on that is an estimate but it should be pretty close.

“It’s not the case that the actual value will be say multiples of that, it will be to within a few thousand pounds.”

Police Scotland’s deputy chief officer David Page said that the overpayments were not the fault of individual staff members and made it clear that the officers would not be asked to return the money.

He said, “It’s not an overpayment where they’ve taken money for something they didn’t do, it’s an overpayment in relation to the policy.

“So they’ve actually done the work and we’ve paid them for the work, it’s just that the work extended [beyond] what the policy would usually cover.

“The largest claim is £274 at an individual level but given that the £274 is in respect of actual work that someone did.

“Notwithstanding the fact it was outside a kind of peace-time policy during the pandemic - I took the decision to write it off.

“It didn’t feel fair or appropriate to go back to individual officers who had put in lots of extra time outside of normal policies to cover the pandemic and recover those funds.”

HR bosses at Police Scotland have blamed human error for the overpayments and have pledged to ensure there is no repeat of the incident.

They said, “We will explore the feasibility of embedding public holiday dates within the system.

“As an interim measure, we will introduce and communicate a new process for carrying out second-level checks at Divisional level and update our procedures accordingly.”

Source: Glasgow Times

(Link and quotes via original reporting)

Hundreds of police officers in Scotland have received more than £40,000 of overtime wages as the result of a payroll error, Glasgow Times reports.

589 members of Police Scotland staff and officers were paid for public holiday shifts due to confusion caused by irregular shift patterns over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to reporting by The Scottish Sun

The error was discovered during an internal audit and was described as “high risk” in a report by financial chiefs

Data analyst Andrew Diffin said, “We are confident that we have identified everything within the data set that’s potentially erroneous.

“The valuation we’ve placed on that is an estimate but it should be pretty close.

“It’s not the case that the actual value will be say multiples of that, it will be to within a few thousand pounds.”

Police Scotland’s deputy chief officer David Page said that the overpayments were not the fault of individual staff members and made it clear that the officers would not be asked to return the money.

He said, “It’s not an overpayment where they’ve taken money for something they didn’t do, it’s an overpayment in relation to the policy.

“So they’ve actually done the work and we’ve paid them for the work, it’s just that the work extended [beyond] what the policy would usually cover.

“The largest claim is £274 at an individual level but given that the £274 is in respect of actual work that someone did.

“Notwithstanding the fact it was outside a kind of peace-time policy during the pandemic - I took the decision to write it off.

“It didn’t feel fair or appropriate to go back to individual officers who had put in lots of extra time outside of normal policies to cover the pandemic and recover those funds.”

HR bosses at Police Scotland have blamed human error for the overpayments and have pledged to ensure there is no repeat of the incident.

They said, “We will explore the feasibility of embedding public holiday dates within the system.

“As an interim measure, we will introduce and communicate a new process for carrying out second-level checks at Divisional level and update our procedures accordingly.”

Source: Glasgow Times

(Link and quotes via original reporting)