Date of Commencement Coroner's Office Act [Chapter 721] (No. 12 of 2019)

The President has fixed 5 September 2024 as the day the Coroner's Office Act [Chapter 7:21] (No. 12 of 2019) comes into operation. The Act was passed in 2019 but had sat dormant since, waiting for exactly this notice.

This instrument does nothing else. It carries no substantive rules of its own — what the coroner's office does, who is appointed, and how inquests run all live in the Act itself, which you need to read alongside this notice.

Anyone whose work touches sudden, violent or unexplained deaths — police, pathologists, hospitals, funeral parlours, lawyers acting for bereaved families — should now be working to the Act rather than to the previous inquest arrangements.