Enforcement

Claims for unlawful deduction of wages can only be brought in the ET. ET deadlines are very short. Any claim must be made within three months (less one day) of the date the last payment was due, or if there is a series of deductions, within three months (less one day) of the last in the series. Unions will have their own internal procedures to decide whether an ET claim should be brought.

Where underpayments are part of a series, in Great Britain a maximum of two years of underpayments can be recovered in an unlawful deduction of wages claim in the ET. This two-year cap does not apply in Northern Ireland.