Jury service expenses are ridiculous

[Dinosaurus86]

Posting here partly for traffic, partly because it is ridiculous and wondering if anyone has experience.

Have just been called for jury service. I am PT self employed. Have a one year old not in any formal childcare. I also have a just turned four year old who is in nursery for two full days and one further short one / week. The wording of my letter seems to suggest that you can get a maximum amount of £64/ day to cover both loss of earnings and additional childcare costs. Does anyone know if this is correct? Because it is less than even the full day rate for nursery before I even take any loss of earnings into account - and that is just for one child - no idea what I’d do about the younger one. We have some family but not enough to cover full time, and she isn’t used to being away from me. Not sure if I should attempt to defer or if will just have the same problems in a few months… help!!!

I know. My friend has been summoned twice but had to get excused both times due to being a carer for a disabled relative. I've never been summoned but I'd actually like to do it.

OK, I have just looked at this - as I was puzzled about how and why the money you get is so low.

Seems after 10 days you get more... £129 a day, plus travel and parking costs...

I mean, that is still only just a bit more than minimum wage for many, but it's more than the £64 a day being talked about here. It's double...

https://www.gov.uk/jury-service/what-you-can-claim-if-youre-an-employee

What you can claim if you’re an employee

You will not be paid for doing jury service, but you can claim some money back if your earnings are affected. For each day you’re at court, you can usually claim:
Up to £64.95 to help cover your loss of earnings and the cost of any care or childcare outside of your usual arrangements

For the first 10 days of jury service, you can claim up to:
£64.95 a day if you spend more than 4 hours at court
£32.47 a day if you spend 4 hours or less at court

If your jury service lasts longer than 10 working days, the amount you can claim increases. You’ll be able to claim up to:
£129.91 a day if you spend more than 4 hours at court
£64.95 a day if you spend 4 hours or less at court

The cost of travel to and from court
You’ll be told how to claim expenses after your jury service has ended.

Taking time off work
Give a copy of your jury summons to your employer.

Your employer must let you have time off work, but can ask you to delay your jury service if your absence will have a serious effect on their business.

Problems with your employer
If you’re not allowed to take time off work for jury service, you can complain to an employment tribunal.

If you’re sacked because you do jury service you may be able to claim unfair dismissal.

Getting paid during jury service
Your employer can choose whether or not to pay you during your service.
If they do not pay you, you can claim for loss of earnings from the court.

If you get benefits or financial support
Show your jury summons to your benefit office or work coach as soon as you get it.
You’ll continue to get financial support and benefits (such as Universal Credit) for the first 8 weeks. After that, the court will give you a loss of earnings form to give to your benefit office or work coach.

How you travel to court The court will pay
Bus or underground
Cost of the ticket
Train
Cost of the ticket (standard class return fare)
Bicycle
9.6p per mile
Motorcycle
31.4p per mile
Car
31.4p per mile - check if the court will pay for parking
Car - for one other juror as a passenger
4.2p per mile
Car - for each additional passenger
3.2p per mile
Taxi
The fare - ask the court for permission before using a taxi

Food and drink
How much you can claim depends on how many hours you spend in court each day.
Time spent each day The court will pay up to
Up to and including 10 hours a day
£5.71 per day
Over 10 hours a day
£12.17 per day

I was just thinking that isn’t even the minimum wage!

That’s for employees. Presumably different for self-employed people.

Making jury service more difficult will coincide with starting to withdraw it.

Not compensating you enough for childcare surely could be seen as discriminatory? There must be loads of parents like you.

If you read my post above - and click on the link, you will see that you can claim for food and travel costs separately. And after 10 days, the amount you get (for lost income) doubles... If it's less than 10 days, well, you're not losing that much income anyway then.

Well yes, but there are way more people who are employees than self employed.

Also, what self employed get is on the Gov.UK website too. (Hint; it's the same as 'employees' get.)

HTH.

www.gov.uk/jury-service/what-you-can-claim-if-youre-self-employed

jury service is 10 days unless you’re selected onto long case. Many jurors only serve for less than that, some jurors will sit around for days and never be chosen to get into a court to actual ply serve on a jury. Mostly they’ll be sent home each day at around 11-12am when courts know they’ve got the jury filled for cases that day.

Hence the overwhelming number of people only get the £64 rate or the lower rate. If you are asked to come late or dismissed early in day while you are actually on a jury, you get the half day allowance irrespective of fact that most people whose employer isn’t paying your salary can’t just pop in and out of work for half days and get pay.

for a significant amount of people 10 days taking home £640 ish or less will tip them into debt. Nice one, uk government

yep you get food allowance, but as I said in earlier post it cost more than 50% of daily allowance for a cup of tea and you can’t bring in your own thermos, or tea bag. The contract caterers are raking it in. The only free tea is when locked in deliberation in deliberation room, and even then we had to push for more than 2 cups in a day.

I got called up. My employer said I'd have to take it as unpaid leave and as the expenses were less than my earnings, it left me short that month.

Every day we were shown into a waiting room. I sat there for about 4 hours and then they said I could go home. I never actually sat on a jury. It was the most boring fortnight that I've ever had.

I'm still livid that I lost out financially and wasn't actually needed.

What happens if you’re so traumatised by DA that you hate men. So if the defendant is male, you’d vote guilty regardless?

On the jury service I did, one man was a self-employed garage mechanic. Our case was supposed to last two weeks but ended up lasting about four or five. He was so worried, as his clients had booked their cars in and he couldn't do them. He knew that they would go elsewhere and might never return to him.The irony was, he barely spoke English and hadn't a clue what was going on in court. When it came to us deciding he just said: I will agree with whatever you all say as I couldn't understand.

Total waste of his time while jeopardising his career.

OP, defer. Just say that you are self-employed and have no one to delegate your work to or care for your children during that period.

The system totally sucks.

🤬 £640 maximum for 2 weeks , half a month. Very small % will serve more than 10 days, to get to higher rate.

you are being very blasé with others peoples loss of earnings on low wages. Stating its “not that much” loss if your only on min wage is best ignorant of what it means to be struggling on min wage, or is just click bait derision and contempt.

frankly shame on you.

Why do you think we need juries?

Personally I’m very opposed to them. The fact that I as a tax payer have to pay jury service costs, usually just to have individuals wait around for days on end, plays a part. It’s inefficient.

I’d like to see a much leaner court system, 1-3 judges. That way some cases actually have a chance of not being constantly postponed with everyone’s time wasted, inc witnesses, lawyers, victims and police officers. It’s you and me that pay the costs of this, but it’s much more horrific if you’re a victim of a serious crime waiting for justice for 1-2 years

It is mad what they 'offer'. It is meant to be the criminals that get punished, not the jury.

I know someone who managed to not do it due to being a night shift worker for several years, so would likely fall asleep during the trial.

Jeez…don’t wish that upon yourself. If you’re called to the High Court you could
be there for weeks. My friend was there for over six weeks on a case involving a ring of paedophiles and she felt traumatised by the end of the trial.
The first time I was called for JS the dates clashed with a surgical admission and I was excused. The second time I was called was about 15 years later and had to attend at the Sheriff Court. I had to listen to tales of machete yielding delinquents having prearranged fights in their local park and of underage teenage girls drinking Buckfast wine in squats with older men and causing havoc in the neighbourhood.
Meanwhile all my daywork was accumulating awaiting my return.

Shouldn’t say this, but stating you can’t read well is probably going to get you off jury service. So much reading to do. You also need to be able to be fluent in English (see earlier post by someone else) to be able to hear, read and understand

jury on my case was selected twice, cos a guy from final selection in the court itself couldn’t read the oath even though he’d not said that on his summons return or at any point to court clerk. . Judge not well pleased..icily polite in telling guy to leave. More time wasted as with one juror dismissed, the whole jury gets dismissed, and then reselction starts again. Another 4 hours time wasted sitting around doing nowt for court to sort that out, and judge to have his leisurely lunch break in between.

so that’s my cunning plan, forgotten how to read, bad eyesight or something🤷‍♀️
once was enough.

I don’t think that expecting the compensation to be at least the minimum wage for the whole period served (which most people will be paid more than) is unreasonable. And that should be for everyone, regardless of employment status.

They couldn’t do this because it could lead to bias. Examples that come to mind:

1. If people with a particular social/political agenda volunteered on the basis that it was an ‘opportunity’ to have impact with those views. Obviously you have to declare certain things before a trial starts but people could hide those things if they had an agenda.
2. Volunteers would skew towards those with more free time and therefore not be representative of the population. For example, the average age of juries might go up if retired people were over- represented among volunteers.
3. Volunteers might skew towards those with more resources who can afford to do it, e.g. certain professional roles where pay is covered. Self-employed people would likely volunteer less.

Juries need to be kept broadly representative- I completely agree that the expenses are insufficient though and I assume they would have to let someone defer on financial grounds. I have deferred on medical grounds based on likely timescales of ongoing treatment and unavailability for court. Initially they gave me a series of one-year deferrals, and more recently a longer one, presumably when they realised this would be an ongoing issue. After that deferral, I will be called again, however.

🤣 I really don’t think 3 judges are going to save money versus 1 judge and 12 essentially volunteered lay people

do you know what judges earn, do you know what they expense for?

you might like to read Lady Hales autobiograpghy , which while interesting, made me actually furious on her ignorant entitlement of a luxury lifestyle at public expense, down to choosing artwork for her new offices at £100ks and lacking any insight as to how that looks to normal folks like me,

I’d like to see maths that it’d be cheaper. I’d like to see evidence it’d not be massively affected by unconscious bias. I certainly have no hope at all it’d make the process quicker, having been on receiving end of judge and barristers lack of urgency, slow motion resolution of problems etc.

Out if interest, did you ask to be excused and were refused, or did you not ask? It would be awful if people could not be excused on grounds of genuine financial need.

I really wares to do jury service (kids are older). Work refused to release me as a front line worker booooo

I got one when my kids were your age and just responded saying I had no childcare for my baby and toddler and they removed me from it really easily

I think you must be able to defer more than once for medical reasons. At least, I have - but I’m in Scotland so it may be different in England.

I was selected once, deferred once, and excused the third time. If it’s a huge case they do warn you in the room before selection, so you can tell the judge if there’s a problem (but be aware you have to tell everyone in the room, there’s no privacy). One poor woman had no carer for her parent and they wouldn’t let her off. She was sobbing so much.
I was excused - running a small company there was no way I could disappear with no contact for 3+ months. It would have crippled the company and sent us under. Thankfully they’d called in about 50 of us for that trial so a lot of us were let go or excused. One poor fella had been called 5 times and had to turn up to be let go - he was a copper! Whatever his position was, he wasn’t allowed to be on a jury but he kept getting called! The system is so stupid.
I served about 15 years ago and the cafe expenses didn’t even cover a sandwich back then.

Lots of people live on the breadline and can’t afford any loss of earnings.

I did notice, however, part of what you’d copied and pasted saying that loss of earnings could be claimed through court. I really hope that’s correct in all cases and processed quickly.