Attending an Inquest Remotely

[JoJo2106]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone can help, someone i knew as a friend has passed away suddenly and tragically and its just devastating to me. There will be an inquest held. I would have attended in person but due to health/disability reasons I would be unable to do so. After researching online it seems you are able to apply to access the hearing remotely as obviously inquests are open to public. I was just wondering if anyone has done this before and what the steps are for applying and how it all works when it's done remotely. Also are the family etc at the hearing made aware of this?

I wouldn't be a witness merely a public observer. Thanks in advance.

So sorry for your loss I don’t have any experience of inquests but I’ve attended other hearings online (all court cases were online during Covid) and in my experience you apply to the court for access and they give you a link and pin.

Do you have a court date and time for the inquest? If you don’t want the family to know I would email the court directly.

Why do you want to be there and why would you not want the family to know? My dad had an inquest and potentially recently a sibling might have needed one. It would have added to our stress to have an unknown person attend. Clearly if you were close and asked it might not be an issue. But I would still wonder enormously why you felt it necessay to attend. I think your relationship is more than you are describing.

example of one Coroner’s Court https://www.westminstercoronerscourt.co.uk/inquests/#:~:text=If%20you%20wish%20to%20join,December%202026

Not really anyone else’s business, I think.

I explained clearly why in my post. It's an unpleasant thing to do. Just because the public can attend, doesn't mean they should. Very different to individuals being asked to attend.

Not all families are the same. I’m sorry for your losses.

Hi,
I’m an Inquests lawyer so I can help. Yes, you can apply online to attend and it’s a public hearing. Essentially you need to email the Coroners court and give your reasons for attending remotely. Coroners do have the right to refuse remote attendance and as you aren’t a family member they may do that.

However, it is likely that the Coroner will ask you to have your camera on for this - essentially to prevent anyone from recording the proceedings, which is prohibited. At the very least your name will be displayed on the screen, like Teams. You can’t attend anonymously, attending remotely is essentially governed in the same way as it is in person.

It’s important to remember that Inquests are family-centric, not aimed at the Deceased’s circle of friends.

Thank you for your replies. On reflection I think I might not attend after all after reading some comments. I wasn't planning on attending to be unpleasant, it was due to the emotional attachment i had to my friend, his death has affected me quite badly and I felt this might bring some sort of closure, or whatever you want to call it. But I also do not want to impose on a families tragedy either, so i think I may not go ahead after all.

Just wondering why they make these things public in the first place.

I think you have made the right decision, OP. I guess they need to be open to the public in the interests of transparency, but certainly in the inquest I attended it would have felt odd, and quite distressing, to have any person attend as a 'member of the public' -- or perhaps even as a friend or wider family member of the deceased. The funeral is the place for this sort of wider circle to have a chance to process the death. As far as I know, the findings of the inquest are public, so you may have your questions answered when they are published by the coroners office. xxx

EDIT: And, just to add, inquests aren't a means to obtain 'closure'. They are cool, factual, institutional, legalistic, drily procedural. I don't think that many people would find them emotionally constructive, unless they had a lot of emotional burden in relation to some possibility of blame being attached to the death.

My advice, after supporting 100s of people through Inquests, is that they often don’t bring people closure. They can be brutal and don’t gloss over the unpleasant details, ie cause of death, descriptions of any injuries/medical treatments.

The main function of an Inquest is for the state to answer the 4th question, ie how that person came about their death. Knowing all of the details is often more traumatic for families, who have the benefit of the family support service to help them through it. As a friend you wouldn’t be entitled to that support. You have said that you have been deeply affected by this persons death and if that is the case I wouldn’t recommend attending.

Thank you so much for all responses. I'm pleased I asked some opinions on this before just going ahead and requesting access. The death was a suicide so as you can imagine, so many unanswered questions. I think that's what I meant about closure, but even the inquest may not give us all of the answers either 😪

Its affecting me so much due to the fact we had spoke briefly in a message a few days earlier, but i was ill with the flu and didn't reply to his last message. There was nothing in the messages to suggest he was in crisis it was actually pretty normal. But just have this massive guilt now that I didn't reply and wondering if I could have said more.

I won't be attending definitely not. Thank you again for all responses xx

Thank you for your reply. Please don't have guilt. Individuals need to make their own decisions. I am sad about my sibling's death, because they don't seem to have lived their full life before death. But the funeral might help you with that. I hope you can attend and support the family. My recent example: my sibling, we have no idea of current friends. I contacted business cards, no idea of how long contact. A contact from over 10 years ago: positive, no expectation of attendance at funeral but still lovely to read.