www.iva.co.uk

Myself and my wife are both in an IVA with Payplan. My wifes wages Vary due to shift work. When initially setting up our IVA we were told only her basic wage would be counted and only oVertime or bonuses would require us to pay more. Now 17 months in and Payplan want to start using an aVerage net pay and are asking us to pay an extra £495 for the last 3 months. Are they able to change the way they assess my wifes wage like this?

Welcome to the forum - my understanding is if your wife's earnings vary from month to month then the basic income only should be used for calculating the i&E with anything received over this go into the pot under the overtime/bonus pot....I would speak to Payplan again and as for the IP not the admin person to discuss and resolve this.

Let us know what the outcome is !

Hi Ian.....having read other posts on this issue I think you'll find that luluj is very close to the mark. Payplan should be using the basic wagic as a marker and depending on your IVA, use a percentage of the overtime (or 100% if thats what your proposal states) as any additional dividend.

In my own instance, due to overtime, my wages can vary on a monthly basis by sometimes an additional £200, however, this is never guaranteed and had my IP taken an average over the preceeding few months and changed my IVA payment accordingley, I would not of been in a position to pay the new amount at times, due to having some months when I get no overtime.

In my case I get the 10% overtime allowance and then pay 50/50 into the IVA which has certainly benefitted both myself and my creditors as without that clause there would be no incentive to do overtime.

I'd certainly address this with your IP in the first instance....good luck.

As an aside to the overtime issue my own Company (after 3 sets of redundancies this year alone), has drastically reduced overtime by means of using sub-contractors to do our work and also bring old employees back (paying them basic wage) on an ad-hoc basis.....not a move that many "employees" agree with, especially when you watch previously retired workers return to work and obviously we lose our overtime but Companies are cutting costs to the bone in this climate and survival of the Company has to be the priority.....just hope my own Company can remain afloat for another 3 years:)

Thanks for your replies. The thing is my wife doesn't do any overtime, her wage varies because she works nights and gets enhanced pay for this and weekends. When the iva was first set up we were told only overtime or bonuses would increase our payments, her wage as been pretty much the same all along and we have not been asked for extra payments before. My arguement is how can they change the way her wages are assessed 17 months into the iva?

well I am in a similar position as your wife as I never earn any overtime but enhancements for nights and weekends which I always do as I work shifts, my IVA company only use my basic wage to calculate our IVA payments and I get to keep 10% of my basic wage I earn above that and split the rest 50/50, I have not gone through a review yet being in the early stages of our IVA but would be a little miffed if this happened to me.

My take on it is, what happens if your wife's employer changes things? with me there is always the chance I may no longer work shifts, or I could be off sick for a period of time in which case I would earn no enhancements, I would go back to payplan and explain why you are unhappy as shift enhancements are not guaranteed income

In that case I dont think Payplan are being that unreasonable, particularly if after 17 months your wife has regularly received the enhanced pay for working nights or weekends on a regular basis. It appears that at the start of your IVA, Payplan would have (quite rightly) taken your wifes "minimum/basic" pay as a reasonable amount in your IVA, however, I would imagine they are quite entitled, after a reasonable amount of time....for example at your annual review, to amend that figure upward (or downward for that matter) in order to satisfy their obligations to creditors.

Obviously you are not in an ideal position at only 5 months after your last review to be told that your payments will increase but on the other hand at least they are not claiming any back payments or allowing your excess amounts to accumulate further into your IVA.

For example if my wages suddently dropped after 2 months past my last I & E annual review by lets say £200, I'd soon request my IVA Company to amend my payments and therefore reduce them.....accordingley I have to expect this to be vicky versa should i find that my "basic" wage rises. In any case my particular IP gets my payslips every month and if they did find a disprepancy either way I would expect a call straight away...saves any nasty surprises coming up to annual reviews.

That said my Company has not given us a pay rise in over 4 years and its unlikely to do so in the near future, so whilst my outgoings keep going up, my incomings remain static....mores the pity.

This could have been dealt with more clearly at the start of the IVA by payplan.

However whilst it looks like the goalposts are being moved payplan are correct in using a net average if enhanced pay occurs frequently,taking your wifes pay to more than was accepted to start with.

But I would be asking them why the sudden change in procedure.

Paul

Hi,
We are having the same problem, our IVA payments were set from the start on an average as we have enforced OT and shift allowence. Although neither the OT or shift allowence is ever guaranteed! 2 years on and with the usual cutbacks etc we are struggling..... Our wages on our I&E are set at over £400 per month more than our actual basic, my shift allowence has gone and OT is drying up quickly which makes are IVA in danager as you can imagine £400 is a lot to try and make up esp living within the tight budgets of IVA allowences.

Do Payplan receive your payslips every 3 months as they did with us. They also let us reduce our payments to 200 pounds without seeking approval from creditors for nearly a year. As we clearly had no money. The creditors then rejected this at a meeting which was long overdue and we had to go back to 3 times this plus arrears which resulted in our iva failing. Ours was calculated when we began our iva with payplan on average earnings over the year using payslips and our p60s as we explained we did sleep ins and waking nights and weekend enhancements on rota basis and no month is the same , So our monthly payment didn't change until we lost hours and enhancements etc . Then it was reduced. Speak with your ip and try and sort it out.

I don't do overtime just get shift allowance and enhanced working for weekends and a call out allowance. This has always been used to calculate my payments and I have not yet had to increase payments ast all.

I send my payslips in every three months to Payplan as well.

Although I have been in an iva for 3 years and just had my annual review I`ve only just discovered this forum and have been reading it avidly for the past week.
I am also with Payplan and have a basic salary and also earn extra shift pay from time to time. (what got me into this mess in the first place was relying on this extra money) For the last 3 years I have sent in my payslips for my 3 monthly review and payplan have never requested any extra money even though I expected it once or twice. After my last wage slip review I received a letter saying I had to pay £300 within 14 days otherwise I would be breaching the terms and conditions of iva. I think payplan must be changing the way they review payslips and shift pay in general.

Hi melody
That's exactly what they've done to us. I was hoping we may get some advice from one of the the IP's who post on here as to wether or not they are allowed to do this!

I can see what they are doing ( if that IS what they are doing!), but don't agree that it should be applied retrospectively. Where do they think people living on a tight, controlled budget are going to find several hundred pounds just like that?

I've just had my latest three month review and my payments have not altered at all.

Ian, it will probably be down to what it says in your proposal/chairmans report.

Speak to your caseworker or email your IP directly and ask if things have changed.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but surely if you have an income of X and outgoings of Y on your I & E, if X is exceeded by anything other than what you are allowed (in my case X + 10% (for overtime) then it stands to reason that your IP should request the excess for creditors.

I realise that its unfair for money to be clawed back retrospectively by IP's and in some cases the excess money shouldn't be allowed to happen in the first place but although we have IP's to control our finances, the bottom line is we all know when we've received extra income and this should be allowed for when IP's eventually get round to checking pay slips and annual income......it really should'nt come as a great surprise.

For example I know if I received a £200 bonus on my pay for whatever reason then the IP would be knocking at my door for their share, however, that said, equally if I was paid £200 less one month then I'd certainly be onto my IP lol.