: My previous employer paid me too much and now they want the money back My previous employer (UK civil service) paid me my full monthly salary the month I left. The month I left (August 2017) I did around 5 days of work due

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You probably need legal advice, if you want to go and fight it.
I don’t know british law, but most countries the ‘timeout’ for money you owe is at least a year if not more, so I would assume you have to pay it back.

[still guessing] the legal point will be that you should have known that you got overpaid, and should have acted accordingly. Silently keeping the money tends to legally be anywhere between ‘perfectly ok’ and ‘theft’; of course you can claim ignorance, and probably you will be fine. But that doesn’t remove the requirement to pay it back.

I recommend to either get a lawyer involved, or accept it, and contact them and explain that you don’t have it right now, and ask for a payment plan. They’ll probably offer something manageable.

Again: I am not a lawyer. This is not a official legal recommendation.

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It sounds about right, except that if you were entitled to paid leave, and took it before the end of your contract, I'd expect you to be paid for those days as well as the ones you actually showed up for work.

When the civil service, it's generally more about keeping the books straight for the auditors, than the actual money. So, they are likely to be reasonable about a repayment plan, even if you can't afford very much a month.

I suggest you get in touch with Citizens Advice how to deal with this. Or, if your bio is up to date and you are still a student, get some help from student welfare on campus; that's what they are there for.

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Is this right?

Yes. They overpaid you, and now they want it back.

Turn it around. If they had underpaid you, and you didn't notice for six months for whatever reason, do you feel you should get the money owed to you?

Legally (IANAL), your terms of employment are a contract, and breaches of contract can be pursued for up to six years in the United Kingdom: Source 1, Source 2

I mean conceptually it makes sense but why would I not have been notified earlier, personally I feel like it's been long enough and not even my fault. Not to mention I don't even have the money to pay them back at this point.

None of this is really relevant. Especially if you knew at the time they were overpaying, you should not have spent that money.

This area I really have no idea and my work life is very short. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

You could contact a lawyer to see about fighting it, though I would not predict a high chance of that working out.

You could contact them stating that you don't have the money currently, and work out some form of payment plan.

You could possibly declare bankruptcy.

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I am not a lawyer either but I wouldn't bother hiring one as the chances of you being allowed to keep the money are vanishingly small.

What you have now is a civil debt, but it can be difficult for the employer to claim this back but they can do via court if you don't come to an arrangement to pay the money back.

They aren't allow to charge interest on this debt so work out an amount you can comfortably afford and offer them that. If they refuse and take you to court over it, the judge will decide how much you can afford to pay and this is likely to agree with whatever amount you offer as long as it is reasonable.

One other thing, get them to confirm in writing how much they overpaid NET - you only pay them back the NET amount, if they paid tax on your behalf, which they will have done if you were PAYE then don't pay the tax mans share back to them!