Average time to process an inquest by coroner area, England and Wales

The Ministry of Justice's estimate of the average weeks each coroner area in England and Wales took to process an inquest, over the latest three years, with the coroner regions and England and Wales.

Average weeks to process an inquest, England and Wales

31.3 weeks

2025

Verified against source, 1 November 2026, 12:26 UTC

Average time to process an inquest by coroner area, England and Wales

2025
2024

Source: Ministry of Justice. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Data table

95 rows

Area	2025	2024	2023
Isle of Wight	77.4 weeks	76.2 weeks	66.8 weeks
Inner South London	63.0 weeks	60.1 weeks	65.8 weeks
South London	61.9 weeks	55.0 weeks	55.6 weeks
Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampton	58.6 weeks	61.6 weeks	55.3 weeks
Devon, Plymouth and Torbay	56.8 weeks	49.4 weeks	–
South Wales Central	55.5 weeks	62.7 weeks	66.1 weeks
Hertfordshire	51.0 weeks	54.8 weeks	46.2 weeks
Northamptonshire	47.9 weeks	49.0 weeks	50.3 weeks
Greater Lincolnshire	46.7 weeks	45.1 weeks	–
East Sussex	44.5 weeks	42.2 weeks	39.6 weeks
Suffolk	44.3 weeks	33.9 weeks	40.0 weeks
Somerset	44.2 weeks	43.1 weeks	41.2 weeks
City of London	44.0 weeks	48.1 weeks	51.5 weeks
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough	43.6 weeks	38.4 weeks	39.2 weeks
Inner West London	43.3 weeks	47.4 weeks	50.0 weeks
Teesside and Hartlepool	40.8 weeks	37.9 weeks	39.3 weeks
South Yorkshire (Western)	39.2 weeks	35.7 weeks	32.8 weeks
East London	36.1 weeks	30.1 weeks	30.3 weeks
Wiltshire and Swindon	35.7 weeks	37.9 weeks	30.3 weeks
Gateshead and South Tyneside	35.3 weeks	27.2 weeks	28.2 weeks
Ceredigion	34.7 weeks	41.3 weeks	13.5 weeks
Swansea and Neath Port Talbot	34.6 weeks	32.3 weeks	32.2 weeks
Berkshire	34.4 weeks	35.0 weeks	34.7 weeks
Gwent	34.3 weeks	41.3 weeks	44.6 weeks
Nottinghamshire	34.0 weeks	36.7 weeks	32.9 weeks
Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent	33.6 weeks	31.0 weeks	27.8 weeks
North Yorkshire and York	33.6 weeks	31.2 weeks	33.0 weeks
West Yorkshire (Western)	32.4 weeks	34.4 weeks	43.5 weeks
North Wales (East and Central)	31.6 weeks	35.0 weeks	37.4 weeks
Cornwall and Isles of Scilly	30.9 weeks	33.5 weeks	34.8 weeks
Norfolk	30.7 weeks	31.7 weeks	32.1 weeks
Cumbria	30.4 weeks	26.7 weeks	27.3 weeks
West London	29.9 weeks	33.3 weeks	29.6 weeks
Dorset	29.6 weeks	32.5 weeks	38.1 weeks
Lancashire and Blackburn with Darwen	29.5 weeks	28.0 weeks	31.3 weeks
East Riding and Hull	29.3 weeks	34.1 weeks	35.0 weeks
North London	28.5 weeks	38.3 weeks	36.8 weeks
Buckinghamshire	28.0 weeks	28.7 weeks	28.3 weeks
Essex	28.0 weeks	27.4 weeks	34.4 weeks
North West Wales	27.9 weeks	35.3 weeks	42.3 weeks
Northumberland	27.4 weeks	27.8 weeks	–
West Sussex, Brighton and Hove	27.2 weeks	28.4 weeks	24.9 weeks
Manchester North	26.9 weeks	27.0 weeks	24.7 weeks
Worcestershire	26.8 weeks	28.7 weeks	23.0 weeks
South Yorkshire (Eastern)	26.7 weeks	28.6 weeks	32.1 weeks
Inner North London	26.7 weeks	29.2 weeks	29.0 weeks
Milton Keynes	26.4 weeks	23.3 weeks	24.2 weeks
Bedfordshire and Luton	25.1 weeks	27.4 weeks	25.1 weeks
Kent and Medway	24.2 weeks	–	–
Newcastle and North Tyneside	24.1 weeks	26.2 weeks	28.9 weeks
Herefordshire	23.7 weeks	27.0 weeks	22.8 weeks
Gloucestershire	23.2 weeks	21.1 weeks	25.0 weeks
Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire	22.8 weeks	27.6 weeks	33.6 weeks
Avon	22.1 weeks	24.8 weeks	24.4 weeks
Derby and Derbyshire	22.0 weeks	27.0 weeks	31.6 weeks
Sunderland	22.0 weeks	22.3 weeks	18.5 weeks
Surrey	21.7 weeks	24.3 weeks	24.6 weeks
Rutland and North Leicestershire	21.4 weeks	21.2 weeks	20.1 weeks
Manchester West	21.4 weeks	24.1 weeks	25.4 weeks
West Yorkshire (Eastern)	21.0 weeks	16.7 weeks	16.5 weeks
Oxfordshire	20.0 weeks	23.7 weeks	26.9 weeks
Manchester South	19.5 weeks	24.5 weeks	21.6 weeks
Blackpool and the Fylde	18.8 weeks	14.9 weeks	16.8 weeks
Cheshire	18.5 weeks	26.3 weeks	37.6 weeks
Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin	18.5 weeks	19.1 weeks	17.7 weeks
Manchester City	18.3 weeks	26.8 weeks	44.2 weeks
Birmingham and Solihull	17.1 weeks	16.5 weeks	16.9 weeks
County Durham and Darlington	16.5 weeks	22.8 weeks	22.5 weeks
Leicester City and South Leicestershire	15.9 weeks	19.9 weeks	19.6 weeks
Sefton, Knowsley and St Helens	15.5 weeks	18.4 weeks	19.8 weeks
Coventry	15.2 weeks	18.0 weeks	19.9 weeks
Black Country	14.3 weeks	10.8 weeks	7.8 weeks
Liverpool and the Wirral	13.9 weeks	10.3 weeks	9.7 weeks
Warwickshire	11.2 weeks	11.7 weeks	13.1 weeks
North Northumberland	–	–	32.9 weeks
South Northumberland	–	–	28.3 weeks
North Lincolnshire and Grimsby	–	–	72.9 weeks
Lincolnshire	–	–	37.2 weeks
Central and South East Kent	–	18.1 weeks	16.9 weeks
Mid Kent and Medway	–	21.7 weeks	18.9 weeks
North East Kent	–	21.6 weeks	20.7 weeks
North West Kent	–	18.5 weeks	17.7 weeks
Exeter and Greater Devon	–	–	56.1 weeks
Plymouth, Torbay and South Devon	–	–	34.7 weeks
North East	27.7 weeks	27.4 weeks	28.4 weeks
North West	21.3 weeks	22.7 weeks	25.8 weeks
Yorkshire and The Humber	30.4 weeks	30.1 weeks	38.0 weeks
East Midlands	31.3 weeks	33.2 weeks	32.0 weeks
West Midlands	20.0 weeks	20.4 weeks	18.6 weeks
Eastern	37.1 weeks	35.6 weeks	36.2 weeks
London	41.7 weeks	42.7 weeks	43.6 weeks
South East	36.2 weeks	32.6 weeks	30.7 weeks
South West	34.6 weeks	34.6 weeks	35.6 weeks
Wales	34.5 weeks	39.4 weeks	38.5 weeks
ENGLAND and WALES	31.3 weeks	31.2 weeks	31.5 weeks

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Source and licence

Publisher

Ministry of Justice

Check it yourself

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/coroners-and-burials-statistics

Licence

Open Government Licence v3.0 – Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Retrieved

1 November 2026, 12:17 UTC

Raw files fetched

https://www.gov.uk/api/content/government/statistics/coroners-statistics-2025SHA-256 80dd800b05ea748c35432448d4f8d7642f320d6279f327d52a9d1d921be8c117 · 18,361 bytes
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6ad611aa67af5c09d04797f4/Coroners_Statistics_Annual_2025_Tables.odsSHA-256 c9699ffae939a044feac5d528aeed128d6d273271998e36976992c53da6c7fa5 · 114,057 bytes

Verification

Verified against source, 1 November 2026, 12:26 UTC Run at 1 November 2026, 12:26 UTC; 285 of 285 figures matched the live source.

Result	Check	Detail
Pass	Provenance recorded	Ministry of Justice; Open Government Licence v3.0; retrieved 2026-11-01T12:17:54Z; 2 raw file(s)
Pass	Raw files match recorded SHA-256	2 of 2 files intact
Pass	Re-parsing raw files reproduces figures	285 of 285 figures and the headline reproduced
Pass	Figures are finite numbers	285 figures, 0 invalid
Pass	Live source matches every figure	285 of 285 figures match exactly after downloading 2 source file(s) again (2 byte-identical); the headline matches
Pass	GOV.UK table is current	latest period 2025 ended 305 days before retrieval (limit 560), from Coroners statistics 2025: England and Wales (statistical tables)
Not run	Second official route	No independent second route to these estimates is published: the MoJ gives them in Table 13 alone, and they cannot be added up; the live re-fetch is the check.
Pass	Source page answers	https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/coroners-and-burials-statistics – HTTP 200

Notes

Accredited official statistics from the returns each coroner area makes to the Ministry of Justice for the calendar year. Coroner areas and their regions are the MoJ's own, by its names: Wales is one region, and the regions are not the ONS's, so no figure is placed in a council or region of the hub's.
Coroner areas merge from time to time: Greater Lincolnshire, Devon, Plymouth and Torbay, and Northumberland each from two areas on 1 April 2024, and Kent and Medway from four on 1 July 2025. An area that did not exist in a year shows no figure for it.
The MoJ cannot calculate the average directly from the returns, so these are its estimates, over deaths in England and Wales only. A region's or England and Wales's figure is the MoJ's own estimate, not an average of its areas'.