Policy background Coroner’s Courts Phased transition to new coroner areas
It is a long-standing central government and more recently Chief Coroner objective to merge coroner areas when the opportunity arises to improve consistency of coroner provision and standardise practice. Paragraph 2 of Schedule 2 to the CJA 2009 provides that a coroner area consists of a local authority area or the combined areas of two or more local authorities. Smaller areas made under previous legislation were preserved under the CJA 2009. In practice, this means that where there are a number of coroner areas within a local authority, it is not possible to merge them if that would result in the new coroner area consisting of less than the area of the local authority.
	This has caused difficulties. For example, a local authority area which consists of three or more separate coroner areas may wish to combine all of them into one coroner area, but may prefer to achieve this piecemeal by merging one area with another as and when a senior coroner from one of the coroner areas retires. This is not possible under Schedule 2 to the CJA 2009 in its present form. Schedule 2 therefore needs minor revision to provide greater flexibility. The provision will modify Schedule 2 by way of a new transitional provision in Schedule 22 to permit two coroner areas to combine, by order of the Lord Chancellor, into one coroner area which consists of the area of a local authority or part of the area of the local authority.