British authority for coroner inquests?

[Stand_watie]

I ask in relation to this article (see below).

To whom do British coroners answer? Is there a set of legal guidlines of what deaths they may inquest or are they free to conduct an inquiry on any death anywhere?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=PRHWLIDZMIR01QFIQMGCFFWAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2007/04/16/ncoroner116.xml

[Iain]

All British military deaths can be subject to inquiry, usually by the nearest coroner to where the body landed in the UK, which has upped the Oxford coroners workload in recent years.

[Stand_watie]

All British military deaths can be subject to inquiry, usually by the nearest coroner to where the body landed in the UK, which has upped the Oxford coroners workload in recent years.

O.K., that has a certain sense to it from a historical perspective, I'm assuming the law on the inquest dates back to at least the French/English war (i.e the one that went from about 1000 to Napoleon's defeat) where you might have military death corpses washing up on any English beach.

Is there any movement to consolidate military death inquests into one governing investigative jurisdiction?

[Iain]

I don't know where the tradition comes from, your guess seems reasonable. I only know what I've said so far because of the coverage of that particular inquest. Most land in RAF Brize Norton which is in Oxfordshire.

I'm not aware of any objections to the system, but I don't know much about it.