When the police were asking the High Court for access to AAIB Shoreham witness statements (which the Court refused), the judges were also looking at a spat with the Norfolk Coroner, who wanted access to the CVFDR for the Lord Ballyedmond AW139 accident. The Lord Chief Justice added to the judgement in that case by stating:
“In the absence of credible evidence that the investigation into an accident is incomplete, flawed or deficient, (my bold) a Coroner conducting an inquest into a death which occurred in an aircraft accident, should not consider it necessary to investigate again the matters covered or to be covered by the independent investigation of the AAIB. […] [T]he findings and conclusions should not be reopened.”
It will be interesting to see how Ms Schofield interprets that direction.