A bank worker who was mistakenly paid nearly double her salary for three years has been told she can keep the money and retain her higher wage.
Natasha Keenan, a part-time complaints adviser for Barclays bank, was paid £17,000 a year instead of the £9,500 she was due and has won the right to keep the money at an employment tribunal.
When Barclays realised the administrative error it initially demanded Keenan pay back the money, but she claimed she was not aware that she had been overpaid and took the bank to an employment tribunal.
Keenan told the tribunal: “My manager and team leader must have known what I was getting paid.”
Barclays claimed the amount paid to Keenan was for full-time employment and she should have been paid on a pro-rata basis for the 19 hours a week she worked.
The error was only picked up in December last year when managers were brought in to conduct a financial review.
Keenan told the tribunal she used to earn £9,500 while working at Woolwich building society but when it was taken over by Barclays she was promised a significant pay rise. When she received the new contract offering £17,000 she thought the near doubling of her salary was this promised pay rise.
Judge Martin Kurrein ruled that Keenan was an honest woman who was unaware of her bosses’ mistake. He said: “I am confident that if Mrs Keenan had known that Barclays had made a mistake she would have informed them of that.”
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