Employee loans and repayment deals

Before an employee undertakes an educational or training course that will be paid for by the employer, it is common practice to require the employee to enter an agreement under which he or she agrees to repay the fees should their employment end during or within a certain period of time following the course.

In the case of Ali v Petroleum Company of Trinidad and Tobago [2017] UKPC 2 the question arose as to whether a term could be implied in the agreement that would prevent an employer from reclaiming the monies if the employment had come to an end in circumstances where the employee had not been at fault.