Introduction to this document
Letter enclosing P45 and/or final salary pay slip
It's not always possible to provide an employee with their P45 and/or final salary pay slip on their last day of employment. In this situation, these documents must be sent on to their home address at a later date. You can use our covering letter for this purpose.
Not quite ready
When an employee leaves you'll need to provide them with a P45 and/or final salary pay slip. Both documents are important:
- a P45 must be given to any new employer; and
- the pay slip needs to be retained for the employee's own records.
Unfortunately, these documents can't always be made available to an employee on their last day of employment. For example, this might fall on a weekend when your payroll department isn't open, or they may be using up outstanding annual leave and not be present on their last contractual working day.
In any event, these documents must be given to the employee as soon as reasonably practicable. Ideally, they should come in to collect them - but that's not always possible. So you may need to forward them on to their home address.
Straight to the point
There's not too much information that needs to be included in your covering letter but you should always provide a contact name just in case your ex-employee has any queries. You should also advise them to keep their P45 in a safe place (it's not that easy to replace this particular document). Our Letter Enclosing P45 and /or Final Salary Pay Slip explains the position.
Finally, we would advise that this letter is never sent out using ordinary mail. It contains personal and confidential information about your employee which must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. Therefore, make arrangements to have the letter signed for at the other end or hand-deliver it if at all possible.
Note. Before an employee leaves always make sure you have their correct address - not all of them remember to update you when they move.
Document
20 Oct 2017