The Chief Coroner, HHJ Alexia Durran, has today launched the “Chief Coroner’s Guidance for Coroners on the Bench”
It has been produced as a resource for coroners to help them locate key principles, practical information and precedents when dealing with inquests, but of course will also be an invaluable reference point for all inquest practitioners.
As guidance it is not legally binding and does not replace the need for coroners and those appearing before them to conduct their own legal research. There will be times when the guidance is departed from for good reason. It holds the same status as the Chief Coroner’s existing guidance notes and law sheets, and has been issued to promote consistency and encourage best practice.
The project began when the then Chief Coroner, His Honour Judge Mark Lucraft KC asked the then Deputy Chief Coroner HHJ Alexia Durran (assisted by a team of practitioner editors) to produce and published a “Bench Book” covering all aspects of court inquest work.
The writing team was led by Christopher Dorries OBE and included the late Kally Cheema (Senior Coroner for Cumbria), Andrew Cox (Senior Coroner for Cornwall), Bridget Dolan KC (Asst Coroner for West Sussex Brighton & Hove), Louise Hunt (Senior Coroner for Birmingham), Penelope Schofield (Senior Coroner for West Sussex, Brighton & Hove) and Catherine McKenna (Area Coroner for Manchester North).
For complicated reasons related to how other legal Bench Books are produced this ‘Guidance for Coroners on the Bench‘ is now supposed to be referred to by all of us as the ‘Bench Guidance’, although surely no one can realistically expect anything other than the term ‘Coroners Bench Book’ to be used !
Within this Bench Guidance there are chapters which include, update and expand upon previous Chief Coroner guidance notes. A swathe of the earlier guidance notes have been withdrawn. In particular Guidance Notes 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 21, 22, 25, 27, 29, 40, 41, 42 and 44 have all been incorporated into Guidance for Coroners on the Bench. Where there are any inconsistencies between those old notes and the new Bench Guidance the latter will prevail.
Some welcome additions to the Guidance include:
- Guidance on naming the deceased (Conclusions chapter at §15 and see also our recent blog post on the topic here).
- Reminding everyone to avoid using the word “committed” if referring to a death from suicide (see Inquest Chapter at §28)
- Stamping out the practice of inquest advocates filing unilateral submissions with a Coroner without serving these on other IPs (see the PIR chapter at §14 here). As the guidance reminds advocates “There is an important principle of open justice that any written submission or application on matters of substance made to a coroner (indeed submissions made to any judge in any court) should be served on all other IPs at the same time as they are filed with the court. It should be the primary responsibility of the person making the submission or application to serve their own submissions on all the other IPs.”