Interested Person
A person who has a proper interest in an inquest and is therefore entitled to participate — including examining witnesses, receiving disclosure, and making submissions. Interested persons include the immediate family of the deceased, any person whose actions may have caused or contributed to the death, and relevant public bodies.
Independent editorial summary — not the official statute text. Read the official version on legislation.gov.uk.
The category of 'interested person' is defined by statute in section 47 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, which lists specific categories of people and bodies who qualify automatically, together with a residual discretion for the coroner to add anyone else with a sufficient interest. The automatic categories include the deceased's close family — spouse, civil partner, partner, parent, child, sibling, grandparent, grandchild and various step- and half-relations — as well as the deceased's personal representative, any medical examiner dealing with the death, and beneficiaries or insurers under a life insurance policy on the deceased.
Beyond family and personal representatives, the definition reaches anyone whose conduct may be implicated in the death: a person who 'may by any act or omission have caused or contributed to the death of the deceased, or whose employee or agent may have done so' is automatically an interested person, as are enforcing authorities, chief constables where a homicide offence may have been committed, and the Independent Office for Police Conduct where it has investigated the death.
The list is not exhaustive. Section 47(2)(m) gives the senior coroner a catch-all power to treat 'any other person who the senior coroner thinks has a sufficient interest' as an interested person, allowing the status to be extended on a case-by-case basis to individuals or organisations not captured by the fixed categories. Being recognised as an interested person carries practical consequences at an inquest, which the Chief Coroner's guidance describes as a public court hearing in which the coroner or jury establishes who died, and when, where and how they came by their death.
Example
The parents of a person who died in police custody, and the police officers involved in the restraint, would both typically be treated as interested persons in the resulting inquest — the parents as close family, and the officers as persons whose acts may have contributed to the death.
Related terms
Official sources
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