A jury summons is one of the few pieces of post that lands on a small business and leaves the owner with almost nothing to decide. The employee has no real discretion about attending. Neither, in practice, do you. What you do have is one genuine decision — whether that person is out of pocket for the fortnight — and a short list of administrative steps that are easy to fumble when the summons arrives on a team of four with a rota that was already tight.
Most of the bad outcomes here come from owners treating it as a negotiation. It is not one. It is a legal obligation with a small discretionary budget attached.
The summons is not a request
You must allow an employee time off if they are called up to serve on a jury. There is no small-employer exemption sitting behind that, no minimum headcount, and no length-of-service qualification.
Section 98B of the Employment Rights Act 1996 makes a dismissal automatically unfair where the reason is that the employee was summoned for jury service, or was absent because they attended. Automatically unfair matters more than it sounds: the usual two-year qualifying period does not apply, so a person three weeks into the job has the same protection as one who has been there a decade. Section 43M gives a parallel right not to be subjected to a detriment — which covers the quieter versions of the same instinct, like removing someone from a project or a rota on their return.
There is one exception in section 98B, and it is narrow because it has four limbs that all have to be satisfied. The employer must show that the absence was likely to cause substantial injury to the business, that the employer told the employee so, that the employee then refused or failed to apply to be excused or to defer, and that the refusal was unreasonable. Note the sequence. If you never told the employee and never asked them to apply for a deferral, the defence is gone before you start, however genuine the disruption was.
Jury service in England and Wales is usually up to ten working days. Longer trials happen, and the person who gets picked for one is not doing it to inconvenience you.
You do not have to pay them, and here is what that actually costs
There is no statutory right to be paid during jury service. Before you rely on that, read your own contract and staff handbook — a clause promising paid time off for jury service is a contractual right you have already given, and a long-standing habit of paying can harden into one through custom and practice.
If you do not pay full salary, the court pays a loss of earnings allowance instead. The cap is £64.95 a day for the first ten days of service, printed on the HM Courts and Tribunals Service claim forms themselves, and it doubles for days beyond day ten of a longer trial. There is a lower rate for days where the juror is at court for four hours or less, and weekends and bank holidays are not reimbursed because the court is closed.
The mechanics matter. Where the employer is not paying, the employer completes the Certificate of Loss of Earnings — form 5223D — stating the employee's net daily earnings for each day they work across a typical two-week period. Net, not gross: take-home after income tax, National Insurance and every other deduction. Fill it in slowly and fill it in early, because a form that goes back for correction delays the employee's money, not yours.
Jury service is one of the few absences where the employee has no discretion at all. The only real decision on the table is yours: whether they lose money for doing it.
Put numbers on it
Take an employee on £30,000. On 2026/27 rates — personal allowance £12,570, basic rate 20%, employee National Insurance 8% between £12,570 and £50,270 — they pay £3,486 of income tax and £1,394 of National Insurance, leaving £25,120 of take-home. Across 260 working days that is about £96.61 a day, and that is roughly the figure you would be certifying on the form.
The court's £64.95 covers two thirds of it. Ten days of jury service therefore costs that employee somewhere around £317 of take-home pay.
Now your side of the same fortnight. Paying full salary for ten working days costs about £1,154 in gross pay, plus roughly £173 of employer National Insurance at 15% — call it £1,330 all in, and the employee claims nothing from the court because they have lost nothing. Paying nothing costs you nothing and costs them £317. The third option is the one most small employers land on once they see the arithmetic: pay the difference between the court's allowance and normal take-home, and the whole argument comes down to a few hundred pounds.
Whichever you choose, choose it as a policy rather than per person. Paying one employee's jury service and not the next one's is how a straightforward absence turns into a grievance.
Deferral: the letter you are allowed to write
An employee can apply to defer jury service once in any twelve-month period, to a date within the following twelve months, and they need to offer alternative dates. You can support that application with a letter, and this is the one place your input genuinely changes the outcome.
Write it specifically. The court is weighing real disruption, not inconvenience, so name the period, name what is happening in it, and explain why this particular person cannot be covered. "We are very busy in October" persuades nobody. "She is our only gas-safe registered engineer and our annual insurance inspection falls in that fortnight" is a reason. Deferral is decided by the court, not by you, and excusal — being released from service altogether rather than moved — is rarer still.
The first 48 hours: a checklist
Take a copy of the summons and diary the start date and the court. Confirm your pay position to the employee in writing, applying the same rule you would apply to anyone else. If you are not paying full pay, complete form 5223D straight away with net daily earnings. Book the cover on the assumption of two full weeks, and set a check-in for day eight in case the trial runs long.
Then three things people routinely get wrong. Do not record the days as holiday or as sickness — employment continues, continuous service is unbroken, and statutory holiday keeps accruing through the absence, exactly as set out in how much holiday staff are entitled to. Do not forget that pension contributions follow actual pay, so an unpaid fortnight quietly reduces them. And agree in advance how the employee will tell you if they are released early or kept on a long trial, because both happen and neither is within their control.
If you are the business, not the employee
Directors and the self-employed claim on form 5223F, with the same £64.95 daily cap for the first ten days. The evidence bar is higher: your most recent tax return showing the annual income your daily figure is calculated from, or a letter from your accountant confirming average daily gross earnings together with HMRC evidence of your UTR.
For a sole trader whose income stops entirely for two weeks, this is the same cash-flow hole as a fortnight of illness, and it has the same answer — a reserve, built before you need it. No sick pay when you work for yourself covers how to size one.
The rest of the public-duties rules
Jury service is the well-known one, but section 50 of the same Act gives employees a right to reasonable unpaid time off for a longer list of public duties: magistrates, local councillors, school and college governors, members of NHS bodies, employment tribunal members, the Environment Agency, and prison monitoring boards. The statute does not require you to pay for that time, and section 50(4) makes reasonableness a balance between how much time the role genuinely needs and the effect of the absence on the running of your business.
The sensible move is to settle it once in the handbook rather than case by case: a stated number of days a year for public duties, paid or unpaid, decided in the calm. If you are writing that alongside everything else that should be in writing for a small team, what a written employment contract actually needs to cover is the companion piece.
Common questions
Do I have to pay an employee who is on jury service?
No, there is no statutory right to be paid during jury service, so unless your contract or staff handbook says otherwise you can treat it as unpaid leave. Two caveats matter. A contractual clause promising paid jury service is binding, and a long habit of paying can become an implied term through custom and practice, so check what you have already committed to. If you do not pay, the court pays a loss of earnings allowance capped at £64.95 a day for the first ten days, and you complete the Certificate of Loss of Earnings stating the employee's net daily earnings. Whatever you decide, apply the same rule to everyone.
Can I refuse to let a member of staff go to jury service?
No. You must allow the time off, and dismissing someone for being summoned or for attending is automatically unfair under section 98B of the Employment Rights Act 1996, with no qualifying period of service. Subjecting them to a detriment short of dismissal is unlawful too. What you can do is ask the employee to apply to the court to defer, supported by a letter from you explaining the specific business impact. If the absence would genuinely cause substantial injury to your business you must say so to the employee and ask them to apply, because failing to take that step removes the only statutory defence available.
How much does the court pay a juror who loses earnings?
The maximum loss of earnings allowance is £64.95 a day for the first ten days of jury service, with a lower rate for days spent at court for four hours or less, and the cap doubles for days beyond day ten of a longer trial. Weekends and bank holidays are not paid because the court does not sit. Employees claim on form 5223D, which the employer completes with net daily earnings after tax and National Insurance. Self-employed people and paid company directors use form 5223F and must attach a tax return or an accountant's letter evidencing average daily earnings. Travel and food allowances are paid separately.
Does jury service count as holiday, and does holiday still build up?
Jury service is not holiday and should never be recorded as annual leave or as sickness absence. The employee remains employed throughout, continuous service is unbroken, and statutory holiday entitlement carries on accruing during the absence whether or not you are paying them. That means someone who serves for three weeks comes back with the same holiday entitlement they would have had otherwise. The practical points to watch are pension contributions, which follow actual pay and so drop during unpaid leave, and your absence records, which should show jury service as its own category rather than being folded into anything else.
