A weekly newspaper has won its latest battle with a coroner’s office to make details of an inquest verdict public.
The Yellow Advertiser had fought to get the full narrative verdict delivered by a jury which sat an an inquest into the death of 25-year-old prisoner Dean Saunders.
The jury returned a 650-word verdict outlining errors at Basildon police station and inadequate health assessment by Care UK, a private care provider at Chelmsford Prison, pictured below.
But Essex Coroner’s Service uploaded only a one-line summary of the verdict to its public website, with no specific mention of the jury’s criticisms of the prison or mental health services.
When the YA asked for a copy of the jury’s full verdict, Essex Council’s press office, representing the coroner, repeatedly refused to supply it – even though it had been read out in a public court.
The full verdict was only released when the YA cited instructions from the Chief Coroner that all documents owned by the coroner should be made available to any person who wants to see them.
The victory comes almost a year after the Information Commissioner’s Office ruled Essex Council committed four legal breaches by failing to release information about complaints to its coroner service which the Yellow Advertiser requested under the Freedom of Information Act in June 2014.
Editor Mick Ferris told HTFP: “This was just the latest in a series of run-ins we have had with the Essex Coroner’s Office over openness and transparency.
“The service has been refusing to properly identify the deceased at inquest openings by providing their addresses and, until recently, even held inquests behind a locked door.
“The initial refusal to let the public read the jury’s full verdict was as baffling as it was indefensible. I can only hope that information will be more forthcoming in the future.”
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Perhaps the inquest should have been covered in person. You would then have known what the jury said.
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Well done Mick for this victory, but given the facts of this inquest it does raise the question of why the YP did not send someone to cover it. If it had, the reporter would have had a full shorthand note of both the evidence and the jury’s verdict.
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It would be good to have a reporter at every inquest, court, council meeting etc but that’s impossible for most, if not all, newsrooms these days.
One man and his dog can’t cover the lot!
Good work, Mick, on continuing to fight the good fight.
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Not sure what planet some HTFP commenters are living on these days. What regional newspaper in 2017 is going to pay for a reporter to sit around in a coroner’s foyer, waiting for a verdict that might come in at any minute in the next day or two days or three days or even longer?
Amazing how commenters here are quicker to attack a newspaper which has won a victory for openness and transparency than they are to attack a coroner who is covering up public record information.
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Fact: Most newspapers do not have enough reporters to cover council meetings, inquests and the like regularly. But if the story was big enough, and this obviously was, surely someone could have been found?
Anyway congrats on getting the info.
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As an afterthought a lot of these hearings used to be covered very well by freelance agencies. But as sales dived local papers would not pay them decent money.
Nose and face……
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