Protocol for Legal Professionals Wishing to Raise Concerns Informally About Judicial Behaviour.   8 July 2026

Following on from the Harman Review, the Lady Chief Justice and the Senior President of Tribunals last week issued a new Protocol for Legal Professionals Wishing to Raise Concerns Informally About Judicial Behaviour. The document formalises what is said to be a practice that has existed for many years: the ability of lawyers to raise concerns about judicial conduct through informal channels rather than making a formal complaint to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office (‘JCIO’).[1] 

The aim is straightforward enough. If a judge has a brief loss of temper or makes an ill-judged remark, advocates are encouraged either to raise it directly with the judge or to ask a leadership judge to have a quiet word

Although the protocol expressly states that it excludes Coroners,[2] practitioners appearing in Coroners’ Courts, should not feel left out.  This is likely to merely reflect the constitutional position of the coronial jurisdiction, sitting outside the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, rather than any principled non-application of the approach promoted in this guidance.  Indeed, in so far as this document is doing no more than committing to writing a process which has long been in existence, it reflects an approach that is already equally applicable to Coroners.

UCPI Designated Lawyer Officers Core Participant Group v Sir John Mitting (Chairman of the Undercover Policing Inquiry) [2026] EWHC 1394 (Admin) (judgment here) 9 June 2026

Anyone who thought that disappearing abroad would provide a procedural invisibility cloak if an Inquiry chair or Coroner wanted to hear their evidence is now going to have to think again. In this latest Divisional Court decision arising out of the Undercover Policing Inquiry the Chair, Sir John Mitting, has just successfully defended his issuing of a witness summons to a witness abroad. Consequently any cloak may now wear thinner than an overused metaphor if that witness ever wants to set foot in the jurisdiction again.

Although the case arises from a Public Inquiry rather than an inquest, coroners and inquest practitioners should read it with care. The judgment contains a detailed judicial analysis of compulsory attendance powers and territorial limits challenging the previous assumption that inquiries (and by analogy inquests) have no power to issue a summons to a witness who is abroad.

R (Przybys) v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police [2026] EWHC 1159 (Admin) 15 May 2026 (judgment here)

This Administrative Court decision reviews the interrelationship between police investigations, regulatory processes and coronial decision-making.  Although the Senior Coroner for Manchester City was not a party to these proceedings, the court identified the coroner’s earlier assessment of this being a natural death that did not require an inquest, as a factor which Greater Manchester Police (‘GMP’) was entitled to take into account when deciding not to launch a criminal investigation into alleged gross negligence manslaughter.

Any coroners still smarting after being referred to as a ‘lower judicial officer’ in the Norfolk [1]case may now take some comfort from Coppel J’s recognition of the legitimacy of police decision-making being informed by the position of the ‘expert’ Coroner.

Senior Coroner for Northumberland v Assistant Coroner for Northumberland [2026] EWHC (Admin) (extempore ruling) 17 June 2026.

Things can go wrong in inquests.  Slip ups and misspeaks are just part of being human. Yet, frustratingly for a coroner, if they want to do the right thing and quickly correct their own innocent mis-statement they will not be able to put things right themselves if the ROI has already been signed making them functus officio (ie their authority to take further steps has expired).

It is then good to learn that what has become known to some as the “Shipsey fix” seems to be working out behind the scenes, even if it is not as yet producing published judgments that might let everyone learn how to use it.  Your blogger only came across the Shipsey fix in action yesterday when a fortuitous listing meant the Divisional Court had listed this case concerning the Northumberland Coroner for an unattended ‘pronouncement’ immediately before her own hearing.

In this Northumberland case an error in the Coroner’s determinations had come to light four days after an inquest concluded.  All involved agreed that the two rogue words ‘family and’ needed to be red lined and struck out from box 3 of the ROI. Happily, the case of Shipsey made clear the High Court has the power to offer this remedy within a s.13 application without the need for a fresh inquest. The Divisional Court was very happy to make that pronouncement yesterday, based on the papers and without the need for any parties’ attendance  the only drawback is that  it took 18 months for that to actually happen. Surely there has to be a better way?

R (O’Brien) v HM Assistant Coroner for Sefton, Knowsley and St Helens [2026] EWCA Civ 605 (19 May 2026) Costs judgment here.

As readers of this blog should already know ‘neutral means neutral’ if you are a Coroner responding to a Judicial Review claim (and if you didn’t know that, see our 2018 blog following the High Court decision in Worthington: here).  Of course in that case the Coroner had ‘succeeded’ in defending the claim, so any judicial comment regarding the payment of costs (even though made by a three judge Divisional Court which included the Chief Coroner) was pure obiter.  Nevertheless the entire Bench had been quite keen to stress that it is really not a very good look for a Coroner to say one thing yet do another.

The Divisional Court in Worthington had sent out a strong message to Coroners that there should be no sleight of hand, saying that: “We do not condone any practice of Coroners … insofar as it exists, of stating that they are taking a neutral stance … but then making submissions that are clearly not neutral but partisan”.  What was made clear in Worthington was that when determining liability for costs what is relevant is the stance the Coroner has actually taken and not the stance the Coroner says they have taken.

If any Coroner might have since thought the High Court didn’t really mean it, then Lord Justice Edis in the Court of Appeal has just taken up a VERY LARGE PINK HIGHLIGHTER to put the matter beyond doubt.