Giving staff time off for jury service
Overview
You must allow an employee time off if they’re called up to serve on a jury.
You’re not allowed to treat them unfavourably for going on jury service, and if you dismiss them they could take you to an employment tribunal.
However, you can ask the employee to try to delay their jury service if their absence would seriously harm your business.
They can only delay jury service once in a 12-month period, and must say on the jury summons when they’ll be available.
Jury service usually lasts up to 10 days, but can be longer.
Paying staff on jury service
You don’t have to pay staff while they’re doing jury service, but many employers do.
If you pay your employee
If you carry on paying your employee, work out the tax and National Insurance contributions in the normal way.
If you don’t pay your employee
If you don’t pay your employee, they can claim a loss of earnings allowance from the court.
You’ll have to fill out a Certificate of Loss of Earnings for the court, which your employee will get with their jury service letter.
If their jury service lasts longer than 3 months, put ‘Yes’ in the ‘Irregular payment pattern indicator’ field in your Full Payment Submission (FPS).
If you top up their allowance
You may decide to top up your employee’s allowance so they don’t lose out on pay.
To do this, subtract the court allowance from their usual take-home pay.
This will give you the top-up payment you’ll need to give the employee.
Use your payroll software to work out the ‘net to gross’ amount, and deduct tax and National Insurance from it.
When your employee returns to work
An employee on a cumulative tax code may have some unused Personal Allowance when they return to work.
Your payroll software will work out if they have less tax to pay on their next payday, or if they’re entitled to a tax refund.
Apply to get help if you can’t pay for this yourself.
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