Jury duty expenses - crippling!

[Budapest99]

Hi there,
Ive been called up for Jury Duty which Im super excited about & really want to do it. However on completing the forms, Ive realised the court will pay a max of £65 per day for loss of earnings & childcare costs combined. My company will deduct the £65 per day from my salary leaving me no money for childcare. I have 2 kids at nursery costing £70 each Mon & Tues so I will need to add Wed to Fri as extra, costing me £840!!!! (£70 per kid for 6 extra days). I would have thought I would be paid the £65 reimbursable for loss of earnings & EXTRA money for childcare. I will need to try & excuse myself as I cannot afford it. What do you think? x

I was asked to do jury service at the Old Bailey, so although I could call in favours for the required 2 weeks, my childcare was too complex to get cover for any of the long trials they were starting and I was excused from three different trials by the judges before the clerks thanked us and sent us home. I did have to explain in some detail exactly why the extra cover couldn't be arranged though. In hindsight I should probably just have deferred, and done it once DC was at school full-time.

@Budapest99 Have you (or other posters) not seen @chocolatecheesecake's post, which echoes what I came on to say. You can claim for additional childcare that you wouldn't normally have, so you won't be out of pocket. What you've been told only applies for days that you would have had it anyway.

The ridiculous situation is that whilst your employer (and mine) continue to pay you, just deducting the £65pd so you get paid the same, employers are not obliged to do this and can pay you nothing, and the self-employed also lose out.

Given 90% of single parents are female, I would say not adequately compensating for childcare while on jury duty is sex discrimination.

I imagine in most cases people would only need to cover either loss of earnings or childcare, most people won’t be working and earning over £65 a day whilst also having their child at home. In most cases I’d have thought people either work and therefore need the £65 towards covering loss of earnings or usually stay at home and need the £65 towards childcare. It’s unusual that you normally earn money at home 3 days a week with two young children at home.

That said the claimable amounts should be equal to the cost of childcare or the loss of earnings, people shouldn’t be out of pocket for doing jury duty.

Agree. Plus lots of people permanently exempt (medical/nurses). Will end up only the retired and the unemployed which is hardly representative.

I don't think your employer can deduct 65 based on the expenses?? I may be wrong.
They can either continue to pay you your normal pay, or can stop paying you.
The government rules say nothing about partial payment or deductions that I can see.

I have been called x2. First time I asked for a deferral and it was granted.
second time I have given medical evidence as to why at that time I was not well enough to serve.

first time, no way could I drop my children at nursery, walk to a bus, catch bus to where I needed to be and get there for a 9am start.

Now of course most nurseries are more than £65 per child!

Surely you'd be paying for childcare anyway, if you'd normally be working those days?

Not possible any more, at least in England. People can only challenge jurors for cause, i.e. if they can show a good reason why that person cannot be a juror because they are ineligible or disqualified; or they are reasonably suspected of being biased. "Reasonable suspicion" definitely requires more than "they might be a mother" or "people of that age are often biased". I assume you're talking about another jurisdiction, as in English law the voir dire only relates to mini-hearings to determine things like the admissibility of evidence or the competence of a witness.

I did jury service a couple of months ago and my employer (local authority) required me to claim loss of earnings because they consider my full salary to be 'an advance'. I left that employer shortly after finishing jury service. Just this week I've received some fairly stroppy communication threatening me with debt recovery because the LA paid my full salary but then couldn't claim back an amount equal to the loss of earnings payment as I no longer work for them. Apparently I'm going to be sent an invoice!

That one hasn't worked since the late 1980s when the right of peremptory challenge was abolished.

I'm really surprised at this as the defence/prosecution have to provide a very good reason, with evidence (prima facie), to the judge to reject a juror in England.

I've done jury service twice in the last 12 years, once on a multiple rape trial (he got 24 years, so a big one) and another for a robbery with a serious assault, and there was definitely no opportunity given to either side to just reject a juror at will.

this was Ireland- each side had 7 goes on refusal for jury duty. the case was grooming and after 3 rounds of jury selection got 10 men and 2 women. trying to find the outcome now. we were told that that it's procedure etc not ti take offence by the judge

I recently did jury service and the ones who turned up but filled out a form to say they couldn’t do the service due to childcare/money etc were excused. Might be worth turning up on day one and trying that route to get out of it. They won’t allow you to be excused on childcare alone without turning up, the expectation is you need to find someone to care for the children.

Do you get 85% back in childcare through UC?

Agreed, but £65 only covers one child in nursery (maybe, dependent on area) so anyone with more than one child is out of pocket and by quite a significant amount too if both a pre-school age. Although I'd imagine many nurseries wouldn't have space anyway.

If you’ve got Legal Expenses Cover included with your Home Insurance then Jury Duty expenses should be covered.
Check your policy or with your Insurer.
We claimed back my husbands full wages for two weeks through our Insurance, his company just had to fill in a form and sign it for us to send off.
It may not be worth it if your insurance policy excess is high but luckily ours wasn’t. It didn’t affect our future premiums either.

Not true. I’m doing jury duty next week. My employer was given 3 options: to not pay me at all, to pay me my full wages or to deduct £65 (less for half days) from my wage so I could claim that from the court. If the employer pays my full salary I can’t claim anything from the court, but of course they won’t. This is not written on the forms you see online but it was on the form I received in the post. We did the same with another employee last year.

How massively out of touch was that judge?! Bet he's never had to worry about finding and covering the cost of childcare in his life 🙄

I'm in Scotland and had to do it last year. Well, I say had to do it, thankfully I didn't have to go in as I wasn't needed. But here they pay absolute peanuts for childcare expenses:

"If you are claiming for a registered carer for a dependant adult, or for a registered childminder, a maximum of £6 per hour can be claimed. If your childminder/carer is not registered, we will only be able to pay £1 per hour per child/adult."

I don't use a childminder ordinarily as I work part-time around school hours. For this, a) I couldn't find someone who would take my daughter on a 'just in case' basis, and b) if I used the after school club which has a flat rate fee of £10, they would have given me only a pound back each day.

I couldn't have afforded to lose this if I'd been on a case for a week or longer. I have no family/friends to help out. I appreciate I am lucky having the option of afterschool care on an adhoc basis as many parents would have to book this in advance.

All I can say is thank fuck I didn't have to go in, but what happens if you book childcare in advance then have to cancel it? You might also end up seriously out of pocket.

I literally got a jury summons 2 weeks ago. I filled in the online form, asked to be excused, cited 1) no childcare options outside of school hours, 2) elderly parents I need to be available for at short notice, and 3) I’m relief staff so wouldn’t receive pay for hours I can’t be available for. Got an automated email this evening saying I’ve been excused. Took about a week to get a response.

It seems the lack of childcare is accepted as a reasonable excuse in England but in Scotland they are really tough on it and don't accept that. And you have something like a 90 percent chance of getting called up instead of only 30 percent in England. Everyone I know has had it at some point!

I wonder what the odds are? I've never been called up for jury duty, despite being continuously on the electoral roll since I was 18. I've always quite fancied it, but no!