Jury service pays £5.71 a day for lunch. In central London, that barely covers a bag of crisps.
Ellie Davies, 30, found that out the hard way during six days of jury duty in October.
As reported by Creatorzine, the content creator turned the ordeal into an experiment:
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how far can you actually stretch a budget that hasn’t moved since 2010?
Not far, as it turns out.
The £5.71 problem
The jury service food allowance in England and Wales has two tiers, confirmed on the government’s own website:
£5.71 a day for anyone at court up to 10 hours, rising to £12.17 for longer sessions.
Both figures date back 15 years.
Davies, from London, said the gap between the allowance and real prices became obvious fast.
“I had the limit of £5.71 per lunch, an expense amount that hasn’t changed in over 15 years,” she told CreatorZine.
“Over the six days, I managed to find lunch that fitted the budget. But I had to explore a lot to find things.”
On day one, she tried to buy a portion of olives.
They cost £6 – more than her entire daily allowance, and she walked away without them.
Six days, one broth
Most venues near the court wanted £10 minimum for anything resembling a meal.
Davies ended up relying on independent sandwich shops to make the sums work.
“Most days I couldn’t stretch to a side and a drink,” she said.
“I did also manage to get a small broth from Itsu one day, and an M&S lunch another day.”
She posted the results as a series, Jury Duty Lunches, and it struck a nerve.
Commenters swapped their own survival stories – one juror took packed lunches for six weeks and still claimed the allowance anyway; another worked through the entire Boots meal deal range while security guards scored each choice.
Not everyone found it funny.
“This should be part of a campaign to increase compensation for jury duty,” one person wrote.
“It’s ridiculous that it doesn’t keep up with inflation on such long days.”
Why it matters
Davies isn’t a food reviewer or a consumer campaigner.
She’s a creator who turned an unglamorous civic duty into content, and it worked because the premise was instantly relatable – anyone who’s priced a central London lunch recognised the problem immediately.
It’s a reminder that the best-performing creator content often isn’t manufactured drama.
It’s just an honest account of something mildly absurd that happens to real people.
The bigger picture
Public sector allowances rarely get reviewed as often as prices rise, and jury duty pay has become a recurring gripe online as the cost of living climbs.
Davies’ series landed at a moment when that frustration already had an audience waiting.
Jam Press has contacted the Department of Justice for comment.
Whether the allowance gets looked at again may depend on how loudly this keeps circulating.
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