Jury service advice on loss of earnings!

DD1966

Hi,
hope i'm in the right place here. my oa is starting his jury service in 2 weeks, he thought his employer would pay him whilst doing his jury service, but after sending back his acceptance to the court, he has since found out that they may not be paying him (i know they are not obliged to), but this is seriously going to put us out of pocket, we still need to pay our rent and utility bills while he's doing his jury service. can he apply to the court to be excused even after sending in his acceptance. we can't afford to be out of pocket, despite this being a public duty! the allowances the court pay will no where near cover what he will be losing.
thanks in advance for any help.

Meadows

I would contact the Jury Service for help, when I did it several years ago I had to get my employer to sign the form to say if they would pay me or not. If they say no then the payment comes from the government and they have to state what your wages are, if yes wages are paid by your employer!
If the form has gone back saying the wages will come from the employer then money will not be paid by the Jury Service. (HM Government or which ever department covers lost earnings or transport costs).

It's very hard to get out of doing it once selected, you have to have a really good reason, even if it's and illness you have to get proof and even then they still might say you have to attend, (when I did mine, if you had a legitimate reason that they accepted, you could defer up to 12 months, but then you had to do it after that).

DD1966

thanks meadows, will call them, but don't hold out much hope.

themaccas

When my brother did jury service his employer did not pay him but he was reimbursed by HM Government for loss of earnings - they paid him what he would have earned and had to give payslips and get his employer to sign a form to confirm they would not be paying them.

Don't worry, you should not miss out financially at all.

Savvy_Sue

I agree you shouldn't miss out, one of my colleagues has just started jury service, we had to sign a form to say what their daily net earnings were, and they will reclaim that from the court for every day they are not at work. Meanwhile we'll deduct that amount from their earnings.

We did check that the maximum amount the court pays is more than they earn.

Actually that makes me think: someone wondered if we could get a temp in to help out, and maybe we could ... just not full-time!

Sailor_Sam

I did Jury Duty about 10 years ago. At the time was self employed as a taxi driver. The maximum daily allowance i could claim was a lot less than my earnings, but they just said tough luck, thats all you can have, so i was a lot out of pocket.
We were not allowed to claim for travel by car and parking,
because the bus fares were less, so had to produce the tickets at the end of the week. We were given a set amount for lunch, which we could either spend in the court canteen or local shops, but again needed to produce receipts. If we spent more than the agreed amount, we did'nt get the extra, but if we spent less, that was what we could claim, whatever the receipt said.
Was a lot of sitting around, three interesting cases, but it cost me a lot of money.

milliejo

i got called for jury service a few months ago & realised that we were going to be seriously out of pocket as the expenses would nowhere near cover the amount I was losing as my employer wouldnt pay either. I rang the jury service and they were really good saying that they didnt expect people to get into debt by doing it and confirmed that I would be excused there and then and sent a letter within a couple of days

Reggie_Rebel

Just write to them saying he has changed his mind and that it is still a free country so he'll decide when he does Jury Service and will let them know in due course.

They'll put him down as a loon and not bother you again

boombap

Sailor_Sam wrote: »

I did Jury Duty about 10 years ago. At the time was self employed as a taxi driver. The maximum daily allowance i could claim was a lot less than my earnings, but they just said tough luck, thats all you can have, so i was a lot out of pocket.

I'd really like to know more details on self employment/jury service. I've recently become self employed in online retail and my wage is my profit but obviously it varies each week depending on the amount I've traded.

I haven't been called up for jury service so I'm not conernced at the moment but after reading this thread it's got me thinking on what would happen in the future should I be called up.

S.

Skint_Catt

My colleague is starting a fortnight of jury service tomorrow and she has said the company won't pay her and all she'll get from the court is a maximum of £40 per day. On top of that the court won't refund any parking charges and she will have to pay £12 per day to attend!

Savvy_Sue

squee wrote: »

I haven't been called up for jury service so I'm not conernced at the moment but after reading this thread it's got me thinking on what would happen in the future should I be called up.

I'd cross that bridge when you come to it, unless you can cheaply add it to any insurance you've got.

the people I know who HAVE been called are heavily outnumbered by those who haven't! I don't know what the stats are on what % of the population do get called, but the chances of being called must be lower now the pot's bigger (legal profession and others now eligible whereas they used not to be).