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R (COLLINS) V INNER SOUTH LONDON CORONER
Administrative Court (Sullivan J), 25 February 2004
C made a renewed application for permission for judicial review of various decisions made in connection with the new inquest into the deaths of those who died in the New Cross Fire in 1981. The inquisition on the original inquest of 1981 was quashed by the High Court in October 2002. C was the father of one of those who died in the fire.
In 2003 the coroner held a pre inquest review at which C applied for financial assistance in connection with his own work in preparing for and representing himself at the fresh inquest. He did not wish to apply for funding for anyone else to represent him. The coroner advised him that there was no source of funding for such a purpose. Subsequently she appointed a retired circuit judge to be her deputy for the purpose of holding the fresh inquest. In due course he decided to hold the inquest sitting without a jury. The hearing of the fresh inquest commenced at the beginning of February 2004.
C wished to challenge all three decisions, ie (1) to appoint a retired judge to be the deputy to hold the fresh inquest, (2) to hold the inquest without a jury, and (3) not to award funding for C acting in person. He sought permission to apply for judicial review of them.
C in person; Alexander Glassbrook for the coroner.
Held:
(1) The retired judge was appointed precisely because of the weight and sensitivity of the case, and his appointment was entirely appropriate. There was no basis for attacking the exercise of the coroner's discretion.
(2) This was not a case where a jury was required by statute, and hence it was a matter of discretion. The deputy coroner had decided that, in view of the expected length of the hearing (estimated three to four months), the amount of documentation that would have to be absorbed, and the need for a reasoned verdict at the end dealing with all the evidence, it would be appropriate to sit without a jury, and there were no reasons to set against this reasoning, nor any basis to say that the discretion had been exercised in a wrong way.
(3) The coroner had been quite right to advise C as she did. There was no source of public funding available for a person who wished to represent himself at a inquest.
(4) In any event, even if there had been any force in the application, there would have been the practical difficulty that the inquest had started at the beginning of February and it was undesirable for proceedings already under way to be disrupted by judicial review.
(5) Accordingly the application would be refused.
[There was no application for costs.]
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Last modified: Monday, 09-Aug-2004 08:53:10 BST by: Malcolm Bishop