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Can an employee who has been over paid keep the money? Not unless they can prove three things: that the overpayment was the employer’s fault, that it was reasonable for the employee to not know they were being overpaid and they had spent the money. So how did the part-time employee of Barclays bank who had been earning £9,500 a year but got £17,000 for 2 years, get on? She won. When Barclays took over the Woolwich for whom she was working at the time, they promised her a substantial pay rise. She was given a contract at £17,000 a year, which was the pay for the full-time equivalent of her job. She did not realise this and thought it was the pay rise she had been offered. The tribunal believed her evidence and found in her favour.