Important Notice to Members who sit as Fee-paid judges – Judicial Pay Claims

If you were appointed as a fee-paid judge, such as a Recorder, before January 2014 then you may be entitled to compensation in respect of training days where only half-day fee was paid.  This is because the fully daily fees should have been paid, rather than the half-day fee.

The Judicial Pay Claims Team state that the period for lodging Judicial pay claims in relation to pension and non-pension compensation ended on 31 October 2014.  Therefore, if you make a claim now, you will need to explain why you did not make the claim any earlier.

If you think you may be entitled, then you should lodge a claim as soon as possible with the Judicial Pay Claims Team at JudicialPayClaims@justice.gsi.gov.uk and, when you do so, you should provide them with the following information, namely: (i) Whether you are making a pension claim and/or a non pension claim (e.g. sitting fee, training rate etc); (ii) What positions you held during the time claimed for and the date of appointment for each position mentioned; (iii) The region/s you sat in for the positions claimed for (if you are unsure of the region, please identify the main Court/Tribunal/s); (iv) What period you are claiming for, including clarification of whether these dates relate to sitting days, or training days; (v) Your payroll number, if available; (vi) Your National Insurance number; (vi) why your claim is made after 31 October 2014.

We are including notice of this in our Newsletter as we are concerned that some of our members who sit as fee-paid judges are or may be unaware that a claim may be lodged in respect of training days where they have been under-paid and this may, in some cases, go back over many years.