Jury service

[Thurlow]

First things first, I 100% agree with how jury service is run and believe everyone should do it.

But seeing another thread today (apologies for the TAAT, I didn't want to hijack) made me think. Lots of people on the thread saying you just have to sort out any problems you have i.e. childcare.

What happens if you really can't just sort something like childcare (or caring for another relative) for two weeks? What if you are a single parent or your OH works in a job that can't give time off, like teaching or the emergency services, and you don't have family or friends to help? Or what if you don't drive and the court isn't served by public transport from your area?

I really do get the logic that you should try and make it work, but what happens if you haven't got the support to go, or going would cost you absolutely £00s?

What happens if you get called and your employer won't pay you or won't let you take annual leave?

Aren't employers obliged to give you leave ?

As usual on these types of threads some of you are incredibly naive. Court gave you a list of local childminders therefore no one could possibly have a childcare issue.

As an example, my children go to a school with no wrap around are and it is a very remote small rural school. There are a numb of local childminders but none of them do the school run to my children's school because it means timings wise they then could not do school runs at other schools.

Of course most courts are accessible by public transport but not all people.s homes are! Some rural locations have one bus a day!

We've just taken on a new designer, to cover maternity leave for our existing designer. Existing designer has to take it steady (she's been hospitalized) with pregnancy issues, and her replacement has been called for jury service for a month.

Just fighting our way out of a recession, and then hit with this!

I would love to do Jury Service though.

What if you are on a zero hours contract and you get called up. Bearing in mind a lot of ppl on zero hours cant afford to even buy food and/or heat their homes so how are they going to afford costs upfront? On the one hand they are being told its their civic duty while on the other hand being told they are not owed job security or a decent wage by the same country that is insisting its their duty.

Is there a cap for childcare costs? Most childminders and nurseries wouldn't take children for 2 weeks anyway. I've just seen the post above about the court providing details but would anyone really want to send a baby or pre-schooler to a childminder they didn't know? And what happens if you get allocated to a trial that goes on for months. You might not only have to do it for 2 weeks.

As for loss of earnings, there is a cap, so if you earn over the cap you would be severely out of pocket if you don't have an understanding employer who covers your salary. And again, if you had to do it for more than 2 weeks you could lose your livelihood if you are self-employed. You can be fined up to £1000 for not doing it, that might be a cheaper option for some people.

I am a solicitor, so the one time I was called up I didn't have to do it, but solicitors are not exempt anymore.

I have sympathy with people who find it an utter nightmare and I am not convinced that it is a better system that say having three judges to hear a case.

Your employer can ask you to defer if it would harm the business but they can't refuse you leave if you've already deferred once iirc. If they do refuse, or fire you for going anyway (which I guess you would have to), you could claim unfair dismissal. You could not claim unfair dismissal if they asked you to defer and you didn't apply for this and went anyway.

I think that's how it works but it's been a while since I did it.

I thought the problem was that "affluent" people were coming up with reasons not to do it, and courts were having problems with juries being made up of people who had nothing better to do and low levels of education (according to MOJ colleagues)

Exactly that on the transport - if you're in a rural area, that might be the problem rather than the court being inaccessible (which would frankly be silly). Ditto childcare, there may not be places available for your DC. Or simply that your DC would be very upset with the experience, if they've not been in childcare before.

I agree with you, muminhants, I can't see a better way at all, but I can see how for the odd person their reasons might look rather petty on paper, but in reality it would be a very difficult time for them. Not everyone has family who can help out for a few weeks.

I guess what got me thinking was the simple fact that my OH doesn't do a job where he can get annual leave as and when he wants, or work flexibly, so wouldn't be able to help at all. There must be plenty of people like that out there.

YY Hermione: that profile may well be over-represented to a problematic extent, as are the affluent and the retired.

It's really important that there is a cross section of people. So it's important The Courts continue to pay expenses promptly, and provide information on local services, and grant a few months deferral when really needed as that gives people far longer to get organised than they'd get if say appendicitis struck.

I agree on the cross-section of society.

It just strikes me that, actually, childcare really is a significant reason for some people. I know why people are saying "you just have to organise something" but in some situations it is a huge, huge thing to organise. The same as if you were a carer.

I thought if you had little children (pre-school age) you would be allowed to miss it, but if they are school age you would be expected to find childcare -regardless of whether your dc were used to or not! I've recently done jury service and it was a great experience!

I was called for jury service when my DSs were very small - I had been a SAHM since DS1's arrival and so had never used any formal childcare and didn't have friends or family nearby who would be able to help. I rang to ask what I should do and spoke to someone who basically told me it was my problem - I applied for and was granted a delay, and tried to find someone who would be willing to take on full-time care for two under-fives for two to four weeks with no success.

In the end I wrote a begging letter asking to be excused, and that was granted - I think the thing that swung it was that I made the point that my lack of satisfactory childcare would make me likely to be called away at short notice - and once one jury member is absent the whole trial has to stop, which is a massive expense and inconvenience.

If I were to be called now it would not be nearly such a problem as both kids are in full-time school. I would quite like to do it, actually. My former career involved regularly giving evidence in criminal trials, so it would be fascinating to see it from the other side.

Ps deferrals are easy to get and I then had 6 months notice for my next call-up, so quite a long time to get something in place.

I deferred once as i was very very heavily pregnant. If they called me up now i absolutely couldnt do as my dp is terminally ill and im not spending the remaining time of his life on jury duty!

My blood runs cold at the thought of the court handing me a list of registered childminders in my area and telling me to use one of them. Childcare is hard to find and ones with vacancies round here have vacancies for a reason. The reason being that one glance at the way they look after children in their care alerts parents to the fact that their children aren't safe with that individual. I'd be a wreck if I was sitting in the courtroom all day worrying about the fact that I've had to leave my child with a childminder who sees nothing wrong with letting them walk along the side of a busy road 50 feet behind her whilst she chats on her phone.

I was called up when the twins were still in nappies, and decided to defer it. I'd already decided to take four years out to be a SAHM until they started school so had no professional child care available, just an informal network of 'I'll look after yours if you look after mine', and (thankfully) a couple of wonderful sisters and a mum.

When it came again, I found the Jury Service office people were really helpful about making practical arrangements.

I was called for two weeks, but actually only served three days.

However... the Court I was called to had two courtrooms, so there were two juries in our refreshment room. My jury's case wasn't particularly edifying (a right thug, who was attempting to wriggle out of GBH which had left his victim with life changing injuries, OTOH victim appeared to be a drug dealer, frankly the pair of them as bad as each other).

The other case going on in no.2 courtroom was horrific, a woman with seven children being tried for child sex abuse. There were massive reporting restrictions to protect the children involved.

The jurors were all pretty upset by it, one time we all came for lunch and all seven female jurors from that group were crying, they'd had to look at graphic photographs of the children. The five men all looked pretty grim too.

We were not meant to talk to each other about anything other than the weather type stuff, but I know I was passing hankies to a couple of them all through lunch.

I'm so glad I was chosen for the other one. Well done to any MN real life jurors out there who've had to look at and listen to horrible things.

I've just done jury service in a court with about 16 courtrooms or more.
The jurors lounge held bout 200 people. Some looked fraught as they were on emotional and difficult cases.
Luckily, my three cases were nothing harrowing, just extremely interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed the process.

What happens as well if you are a single parent or the DP is working away and the young child in temporary childcare falls ill as often happens when they are young and you have to go and fetch them, you can't just leave them all day. This could also happen with regular childcare and school.

So glad I didn't have to do it when DS was young, i would like to now though as DS has grown up and it would be quite easy for me to do as I have no family responsibilities.

I am utterly terrified of getting called for jury service. I struggle with my mental health. If I had to sit on a jury for anything violent or sex abuse related I don't know how I would cope with it, particularly since I'd be forbidden to talk about it. I actually live in fear of the postman coming, that's how much it scares me.

Sorry, I don't mean I live in fear of the postman every day, that would be extreme. I just mean that when I get to thinking about it, reading a thread like this or whatever, it will play on my mind for a week or two and make me very anxious.

I've done it twice, first time when DCs were 2 and 4. Second time they were 9 and 7, that was actually harder as it fell partly in the school holidays. Your employer is obliged to let you have time off and you can claim for loss of earnings up to a certain amount ditto childcare.

On my second stint there was a trial starting that was due to last 6 weeks, they called about 45 of us to start with and asked us to write down any reasons that we couldn't do that before they whittled it down to the final 12. I put down childcare reasons and was let off, which I was grateful for as it eventually lasted 10 weeks IIRC and having followed it on the news I suspect it would have been pretty harrowing.

Does it come by post or is it a special courier delivery.

I'm so glad I'm exempt. I'd hate jury duty. I know it's essential but I can fully sympathise with people who don't want to do it

I thought that, treacle. The one nursery around our way that would have spaces immediately has spaces immediately for a good reason - parents tend to chose the other nurseries.

Good point about how much a juror might concentrate if their kids were with a strange and new childminder, or if they were the sole emergency contact. There's a big difference between really little DC and kids in school, I imagine, especially in terms of how much childcare you'd need to arrange.

I would really like to do jury service - the only time I've been called was when I would have been 7m pregnant, and at the time of getting the call I was in the middle of chronic HG. Interestingly I can't remember if they even asked to see a copy of the MatB form, or whether they just deferred me on my say so.

I moved area straight afterwards. I wonder if they'd have that old deferral on file, or whether the two systems wouldn't talk to each other?