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’d really like to do it. I’d get full pay for JS and would love to sit around for hours just reading a book, or even just people watching, waiting to be called. So long as it wasn’t CSA or any other form of child abuse. I don’t think I could cope with that very well.

I watched that programme a couple of years ago where a real life old case was picked, there was Jury A and Jury B and they re-enacted the trial while filming the juries reaching their conclusions. Bloody terrifying.

It does. It has with me. They do let you defer more than once in some cases, because obviously they have to!

Haha! That made me laugh. Aye, the people who want to do it, like Politicians, are precisely the ones who shouldn't.

Hard agree. After years of interactions with Barristers, Solicitors and Judges (as an innocent party) they drag the fucker out as long as they can. Wouldn't run if their arse was on fire if they could get a fiver for strolling.

Exactly. Many countries don’t have juries at all, some have them for certain types of case only. I don’t know about remuneration elsewhere but I’d guess our shitty and underfunded criminal legal system is uniquely bad at enabling citizens to perform this particular duty.

That’s even worse! If you are say a self employed builder and have to do 4 hours in a given day at jury service, that day is lost to you. It’s not like you will be getting work for the remaining 4 hours. But (during the first 10 days) all you will get will be £32.47! Despite losing an entire day’s work and income!

It’s revolting and contemptuous of both self employed (who are being required to subsidise the court system) and the whole idea of jury service, in that clearly it excludes certain demographics. (The conspiracy minded might even wonder if that’s intentional.)

I believe in the jury system - but if we are to retain it, it needs fundamental reform including proper compensation for loss of earnings based on PAYE and tax returns.

Can’t work out from your post what you actually think. You’d love to do JS so long as it wasn’t an upsetting case but also you’ve seen that show and concluded it’s ’terrifying’ but you’d love to do it? I’m baffled!

Don't be under the illusion that its a nice environment to 'sit around reading a book and people watching'

There's not enough seats. There will be a TV blasting trash daytime TV. There will be people watching shit on their phones without headphones. The room will likely be too hot or too cold. There will be people constantly talking loudly and coming and going. The toilets will be horrible. You will have the opportunity to pay over the odds for poor quality refreshments. You will mix with a lot of people expressing views you disagree with. You will have to queue up and be searched every time you enter the building.

If you want to recreate the experience I suggest you go and sit in A&E on a Saturday night or in a regional airport on the first day of the school holidays.

That’s a very good point, I hadn’t thought of it that way!

I've done it three times,.and been called a fourth but I declined as it was too early (supposed to be a two year gap/.I loved it and am waiting for magistrates position to open up
I actually thought the expenses were generous and made money but I have insurance that covers my wage if I am unable to work due to sickness injury or other reason,.being self employed I think it's important to protect m
y earnings

Hardly lucky.

serving on a jury should not cause financial hardship. People just would rather risk getting into trouble themselves rather than do jury duty if there was no compensation for the expenses they lost. The expenses, as they currently are, as demonstrated on this thread are a joke and a massive barrier to people being able to do jury duty.

and it really woukd affect the outcome of trials - as people would base their decision on how annoyed they were to be there.

I've been called up 4 times and sat on a jury twice.

yoh get to see how inefficient the justice system runs.

but, depending on the case, it's not pleasant. I'm done, as far as I'm concerned. I will do my very best to get out of any future summons.

You can defer. When I phoned them about it it basically said that everyone can defer the first time if they have an excuse. They ask you for suitable dates you can do in the next year. I was given the first date on my list. I was then excused as they had enough people.

The most ridiculous part of my experience was the travel expenses. I was living at my parent's place at the time, very rural (think two busses per day) and didn't drive. A taxi to court was about 20 quid, and I could get a bus home for around a fiver.

I enquired about claiming for this on the first day and they absolutely refused to pay for a taxi, insisting they could only pay for a bus or train. I showed them the bus timetable, and explained that I would be turning up at around 12 noon each day on the first bus if that was the case. I was told this was not acceptable, and the judge could take action against me for disrupting the trial.

I told them that the only way I'd be able to make the journey on public transport was by staying at my partner's place (around two hours away) and getting a train there and back each day. The train was about £46 per day for a return ticket. They told me this was fine, they would happily reimburse me for the train.

I did some quick math and told her how much more expensive the train would be.

"It doesn't matter, we don't pay for taxis, they're too expensive."

My head was absolutely fried by this point so I dropped it. I ended up buying a train ticket for every day of my service, keeping the receipt and refunding it. Not proud of it, but as my employer didn't pay me for the two weeks I served it was costing me hundreds of pounds a day to be there. Felt like a little win.

@LadyBlakeneysHanky there is a section on the claim form to say whether you would be able to return to work if you only did a half day at court. If your employer ticks that you wouldn’t be able to return for a half day, eg due to travel time or like the example you gave of the builder, then they will still pay a full day even when you have only done half.

A guy on one of my jurys made it clear that he didn't care about the facts, and would agree with whatever the majority was (and convince others to do the same) so that he could get it over as quickly as possible.

He was the most brazen but he wasn't alone.

Seems after 10 days you get more... £129 a day

It goes up incrementally, I believe to somewhere in the region of £2-300 per day...but IIRC that's for cases that go beyond six months.

That's why most people never serve longer than two weeks. If you start your service on a Monday, get called on Tuesday and the trial finishes the following Monday, they'll dismiss you rather than risk having you called again on the Tuesday/Wednesday of your second week, so you don't go over the payment threshold.

I do have to say though, I'm in Scotland and served on a jury last December. No more waiting about to see if you were called. That's all done (or at least it was for the court I had to attend) without any potential jury members in court.

you have to call the court the night before to see if your number is in rotation for the next day. If it is, the court call you first thing, say how long the case is likely to be and when the selection is did to be made. You then get a call mid morning to say if you have been selected and then you need to make your way to the court - I had to be there by 2, so had about 3 hours.

much more efficient than the previous time, as that did involve a lot of sitting around.

Yes I had this in Scotland ten years ago where I called the night before and was told I wasn't needed. I don't understand why it doesn't happen in England. Mind you,you're much more likely to be called in Scotland. In Edinburgh it feels like everyone has been called at some point. According to Google, you have a 95% chance of being called whereas in many English cities it's more like 35%.

They do do this in England where they can. I got assigned to a case on my first day but other people had to call in the evening to check if they were required to turn up. It all depends how many trials are due to start on a particular day (although there is still a huge amount of hanging about due to slippage in time scales).

Thanks for your reply, interesting reading. No, I haven’t served in a jury. I’d find it interesting I think but like a huge number of others on here would struggle - self employed with 2 young children. Childcare for the 2 of them would cost £125 for each day and I’m self employed. The nature of my work means I work unpaid for much of the week (doing marketing etc) but if I have a booking I take £600ish for the day. If I had no bookings theoretically I’d lose no money but the impact would be later on where I had no bookings due to no time spent marketing for 2 weeks.

I take your point that jurors don’t need to know the law. I agree unconscious bias is a huge issue, but I don’t see that 12 random people off the street will necessarily have less unconscious bias than professionals. Perhaps professional juries could have extensive training in unconscious bias rather than what the the law is.

My (extremely intelligent) friend did jury duty and found the whole thing extremely frustrating for many of the reasons already mentioned (organisation, hanging around etc). I don’t know the details obviously as she couldn’t share them but she said that a number of jurors seemed not very bright and were lead by things which they weren’t supposed to let influence them and the defendant got off when in her mind he was obviously guilty. The charge was something lots of people wouldn’t think that serious (ie not rape, murder) and some of the jurors didn’t seem to think he’d done much wrong even if he was guilty and were happy to let him off as a result.

Yes, my partner would be in the same
position as you - not always having a paying client on the day and not being able to show an ‘actual’ loss. I think post Covid payouts, this positions looks less and less reasonable.

I also note in @Zov list, that the recourse for issues with employers is litigation in the form
of tribunal or an unfair dismissal claim! Unfair dismissal is only relevant if you have been there 2+ years plus being forced to take legal action is a big ask!

re: the parking, my local courts won’t pay - they say you must use park and ride. I am
also in a rural area so without a car you’d be dependent on very infrequent and unreliable public transport. I have heard of a juror brought before a court and fined for returning late from lunch! They claimed the security queue was long but it made no difference. Would they fine for transport delays start of day?!

Say you can't due to childcare. I did this.

I didn't ask as I didn't know at the time that you could refuse for financial reasons. I thought you could only get out of it for reasons like ill health, lack of childcare, etc.

I'm self employed and in the position where not being available for a single day could mean I lose out on far more work in the future as I will often be asked my availability for a whole series of dates for the same job, where I need to be free for all or most. Even without that, the reimbursement is a joke and nowhere near my day rate.

I was finally summoned a couple of years ago, and immediately asked to be excused on the basis of financial hardship. Explained it all, and got a response saying my request had been denied. Couldn't understand it as husband (also self-employed) had been excused 20 or so years before with no problem. Panicked. Phoned up the Court (number was on the summons). Very nice woman there explained that these days you need to defer first, for as long as possible (so, almost a whole year) THEN you can ask to be excused. Did that, waited, got excused.

I don't know if some people on here are muddling up deferral and being excused but not being allowed to defer when you have a broken ankle seems mad to me and I wonder if that poster asked to be excused rather than defer.