Chief Coroner of England and Wales
judicial office in England and Wales
The Chief Coroner of England and Wales is the most senior coroner in England and Wales, and supervises the work of other coroners in that jurisdiction.
The post was created by the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. The first Chief Coroner was appointed in 2010, though he did not take up his post until 2012. Previously there had been no national head of the coroner service.
The Chief Coroner is appointed by the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, in consultation with the Lord Chancellor. To be eligible for appointment, a person must be either a judge of the High Court or a circuit judge and be under the age of 75.
Post holders
Since 2009, four people have held the position:
2012 (2012)–2016 (2016): Peter Thornton KC
2016 (2016)–2020 (2020): Mark Lucraft KC
2020 (2020)–2024 (2024): Thomas Teague KC
2024 (2024)–Incumbent: Alexia Durran
All four holders of the office were circuit judges sitting in the Crown Court at the time of their appointment.
Deputy Chief Coroners
Two Deputy Chief Coroners were appointed in January 2019: Derek Winter, the Senior Coroner for the Sunderland Coroner Area, and Alexia Durran, a senior circuit judge.
The public source identifies “Chief Coroner of England and Wales” as judicial office in England and Wales. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Chief, Coroner and England.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 24, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q106474443. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chief Coroner of England and Wales” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.