Part 2: Courts, tribunals and coroners Chapter 4: Coroners Section 43: Phased transition to new coroner areas
This section is to address a point in the 2009 Act that does not permit the merger of pre-existing smaller coroner areas made under previous legislation (and preserved by the 2009 Act), if the merger of those smaller coroner areas would make a new coroner area which is not the entire local authority area.
	This has caused difficulties because under paragraph 1(2) of Schedule 2 to the 2009 Act, each coroner area is to consist of the area of a local authority or the combined areas of two or more local authorities. Two coroner areas may not be merged into one coroner area if that area will consist in total of less than the area of a local authority.
	This section inserts a new paragraph 1A after paragraph 1 of Schedule 22 to the 2009 Act to permit two or more coroner areas each of which is wholly within the area of the same local authority and is specified in either the transitional order (which preserved coroner areas made under previous legislation), or an earlier order made by virtue of the paragraph to combine, by order, without the resulting coroner area having to satisfy paragraph 1(2) of Schedule 2 i.e. not having to be the whole of the area of a local authority.
Example (1): merger of coroner areas
Kent consists of four separate coroner areas. Kent County Council, with the approval of the Chief Coroner, wishes all four areas to be combined into one coroner area, coterminous with the area of Kent County Council and Kent Police Authority. Kent would have liked to achieve this piecemeal, merging one area with another as and when a senior coroner from one of the coroner areas retires. But that is not possible under Schedule 2 to the 2009 Act in its present form. This amendment will permit Kent County Council by order of the Lord Chancellor to combine all four areas into one coroner area.