Nanny on jury duty - couple of questions

[CinnabarRed]

Our nanny has been called for jury duty in June. She has already deferred once (before she started with us) so can't defer again.

I'm thinking about alternative childcare arrangements while she's away.

Does anyone have any experience of temporary nannies? DS1 is 3.5 years and DS2 is 12 months, and I was wondering whether they're too young to cope with a temporary nanny.

On a separate point, what happens to our nanny's pay while she's on jury service? Her letter states that she's entitled to claim £35 (presumably net because they won't have her PAYE details?) per day from the court, but we pay her £80 (net) per day. I don't see why she should suffer financially while she's on jury duty. I was thinking about topping up her £35 to £80 per day. The £35 per day we save would be useful to go towards the cost of temporary childcare. What do people think about that?

TIA.

does she have to do it, can you refuse to release her?

I suspect if she just says she looks after small children to whom she is bonded and is not being allowed to get away by her employers and cannot afford it and you put a letter in with it explaining why she may well be let off the hook again. Try it and see.

Ooh, that's a thought. I'll post in legal to see if anyone has any experience there.

i doubt she will be able to get off again. when you defer the first time you have to give them a list of dates you will be unavailable and when the dates come through the 2nd time you can't change them. Employers legally have to give time off for jury service now although it can be unpaid.

When i did jury service a couple of years ago i had to take as unpaid leave from work and the amount i could claim form the court was quite abit less than what i get paid at work. (i can't remember how much it was sure it was more than £35 though) In my case it didn't end up as bad as i thought as most of the time you go in the morning and then half the people up change their plea to guilty so they no longer need you, i then went into work so got paid for half that day but that wouldn't be possible in your nannys case as you'd need to know in advance so you can arrange alternative childcare.

You also get paid travel expenses and about £5 a day for your lunch so it all mounts up.

It is also worth her checking her home insurance policy as if she has legal cover then it will probably cover loss of earnings when on jury service, although they dont pay you for the first 3 days on my policy.

Thanks Morph. It's £35 for each day that's less than 4 hours of jury duty, and £65 for each day that's more than 4 hours.

I really don't want our nanny to be out of pocket purely because she's been called to do her civic duty - that seems really unfair. The problem I have is that I can't pay her as normal and then reclaim the allowance from the court because the court won't allow it. I can't pay her in full and then ask her to repay me her claim because the court requires me as her employer to declare whether I've paid her as usual or reduced her wages. I can't adjust her wages downwards so that she'll get the same net pay (i.e. £35/£65 from the court and me topping her up to her usual £80 net) because I won't know how many hours of jury duty, if any, she's asked to do each day until it's actually happened.

The system does make it very difficult for small employers like me to do the right thing by our employees. The easiest thing by far would be to just not pay her for 2 weeks, but I don't want to do that.

I wonder if it would be acceptable to the court for me to adjust her pay down in July, rather than June, once her hours claim has been paid out by the court? So she's not out of pocket in June, and we're both in the right net position by the end of July. As someone who served on a jury, would you find that acceptable?

I think people manage to get off a second time all the time. Definitely worth a try. Also you could try calling up the court too and explaining as well as writing.

TBH, if we deferred then similar issues would arise next time she's called. At least this time round one of the two weeks is already dealt with because we're on holiday.

It's more the admin side of the allowances that's irritating me now. It shouldn't be this hard for our nanny to claim whatever she's entitled to from the court (depending on the hours they need her) and for us to top her up to her usual £80 net per day.

Could you let her claim the court fee for the 2 weeks. Then up the salary for the other 2 weeks of the month?
Or do say a 50% salary increase for the week before jury duty, then not pay for 2 weeks letting court do that, then top up salary the week following jury duty once hours are known?

Hi nannynick. Those are good ideas. I'll ask our nanny which she'd prefer, and also check with our payroll provider about when their payroll cut off is (it may not be possible to adjust June's salary after we know her court allowances).

What a faff. I'm not going to do it, but I can really understand why most small employers just don't pay for however many weeks their employees are on jury duty.

Goodness knows what we'll do if she ends up on a case that lasts longer than 2 weeks....