Pay and Benefits

In the Pay & Benefits weekly e-newsletter, we asked whether employees at your company receive full pay while on jury duty. More than two-thirds of you said that they do.

Employees can be summoned for jury duty at any time provided they are aged between 18 and 70 on the day the service is due to commence. Other rules include being registered to vote and having lived in the UK for at least five years.

Employers are required by law to allow employees to take time off to partake in jury duty and have no right to ask for the employee to be excused or deferred from serving. However, employees can apply for a deferral or exclusion, but this must be done within seven days of receiving the summons.

Employees should be aware of the need to communicate with employers if they are called upon to perform jury duty. This should be made clear within the employees’ handbook so that if a deferral request needs to be made, it can be done quickly and within the tight seven-day deadline.

 

Although employers are obligated to allow employees time off to serve their time on a jury they do not have to pay that member of staff. If the employer does not pay an employee while they are on jury duty then they will need to fill in the “Certificate of Loss of Earnings”, so that they can make a claim to the court. However, if the employee is paid for this time they will only be able to claim travel and subsistence expenses back from the court.

 

To find out more about jury service pay click here.