Bereaved relatives are to have a new right of appeal regarding inquest rulings, under an extensive reform of the coroners’ system.

Legislation will allow relatives to challenge a coroner’s decision on whether an inquest is held with a jury; the holding of a second postmortem examination; and even the verdict.

At present the sole route to such a challenge is through judicial review, which is prohibitively costly. Yet the changes, expected to be announced in the Queen’s Speech, could still leave the system open to accusations of being a “postcode lottery”.

The reforms, the first big changes for more than a hundred years, are intended to modernise the service and follow more than five years of consultation.

André Rebello, secretary of the Coroners’ Society of England and Wales, said that reform was needed urgently. “The coroners’ services have become blighted,” he said. “The society fully accepts the difficult decisions that local authorities have in planning the spending between various essential services. However, some local authorities and police authorities have not made adequate provision for a coroner’s service . . . many coroners are working with inadequate court facilities, offices and support staff, all of which tragically neglects the bereaved.

“All coroners should be enabled to deliver a service from a similar infrastructure. It is fair to add that there has been little national guidance and support and it is not surprising that there is a perception of a postcode lottery given the varying resources available to coroners,” he added.

Bridget Prentice, the minister in charge, told The Times that she was disappointed that a slot had not been found for the Bill in the last legislative session and that she was determined it should be a priority for the next session. The aim of the Bill would be to modernise the service through a “good national framework and leadership, while ensuring the service remains firmly grounded locally, and by making sure that investigations and inquests are more effective”.

However, the impact of the reforms is expected to be diluted by a lack of resources. The original draft Bill had put local authorities under a duty to provide and maintain accommodation for investigations and inquests. The revised Bill allows the local authority to “provide and maintain whatever accommodation it thinks appropriate.”

The Bill has also dropped the controversial proposal that would have allowed coroners to impose reporting restrictions in sensitive cases.

Similarly, the proposal enabling the Lord Chancellor to limit coroners’ powers to call evidence has been dropped. Coroners’ powers to require organisations to take action to prevent deaths in future have however been strengthened. From July a statutory duty was placed on organisations to respond to coroners’ reports on action that should be taken to prevent deaths and to share reports with bereaved families.

Ms Prentice said: “Families often express their wish that something positive might come out of a coroner’s inquiry and hope that agencies will take preventative action so that the death of their relative is not in vain.

“Under the new rules we’re introducing, organisations will no longer be able to ignore coroners’ reports sent to them and will be required to respond. Family members will be provided with copies of both the reports and responses, giving them more involvement and a chance to see what preventative action may be taken.”

From medieval to modern

The Bill will:

— Contain a new right of appeal to a chief coroner against certain decisions by coroners
— Include provision for registered medical practitioners to notify the coroner of relevant deaths
— Require juries to be retained for workplace-death inquests
— Mean that the same duty to investigate deaths will apply where a death occurs abroad
— Require local authorities to provide accommodation that enables the coroner to carry out his or her functions

Coroners:

— Are charged with investigating sudden, violent or unnatural deaths
— The office of coroner dates from 1194 and developed from being a tax gatherer to an independent judicial officer.
— The current system dates from 1887
— There are more than 120 coroners in England and Wales
— They must have legal or medical qualifications; some have both

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