Voluntary Organisations

All online donations are made securely via the Charities Aid Foundation and include the option to Gift Aid your contribution if you are a UK taxpayer.

You can also become a supporter by sending a cheque or postal order to the INQUEST office. Just download the form and return it to us, or click here to email your details and we will post a form to you.

All online supporter payments are made securely via PayPal.

INQUEST is grateful to the many individuals, businesses and organisations who have raised funds and made donations to us in many different ways.

Recent examples include:

• Beaucatcher hair salon held a benefit show for INQUEST in north London on 24 October;
• Henrietta Hill from Doughty Street Chambers completed the Hever Castle triathlon at the end of September;
• Hodge Jones and Allen solicitors hosted a quiz night for INQUEST on 24 September;
• Smith + Bell donated the redesign of our INQUEST Lawyers Group and Inquest Law flyers.

You can read more about these events and donations here. We would like to hear from you if you have any ideas on how you can help INQUEST to raise the funds we need. INQUEST has a JustGiving account, so you can set up your own page to raise funds for us too.

You can help INQUEST financially by:

• making an annual subscription as a supporter or affiliating to INQUEST;
• making a donation as a one-off or as a direct debit - for any amount you choose;
• subscribe to our journal Inquest Law;
• buy our publications;
• encourage your family and friends to support us.

Do you regularly access the INQUEST website for information? If so please consider joining us as a supporter, or giving a one-off donation to contribute to our work.

 Many of INQUEST's publications and all of our press releases since 1996 are available for free download as PDFs, making a vluable resource for the media, academics, students, and those with an interest in the human rights issues our casework raises.

What people who have used our information pack on inquests and our casework service have said:

“Really useful …when I go to the inquest I feel I will not be as lost as I thought I would be”

“Very helpful, very scared of the inquest, but feel a bit calmer now”

“Thank you so very much for all of your help. You have been a glowing light in a very dark tunnel. Your support has been invaluable.”

Among our achievements in 2007 - 2009 have been :

• the inclusion of deaths in custody in the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007;
• work on the restraint-related deaths of Gareth Myatt and Adam Rickwood which generated widespread public and parliamentary concern over the deaths of children in detention;
• jointly winning the Liberty/JUSTICE Human Rights Award;
• the re-launch of the highly regarded journal Inquest Law ;
• publication of Unlocking the Truth, outlining families' experiences of the investigation of deaths in custody, and of Dying on the Inside, documenting women's deaths in prison;
• campaigning successfully for the removal of proposals for 'secret' inquests - to be held without juries and with government-approved coroners and lawyers - from the Counter Terrorism Act and then the same proposals from the Coroners & Justice Act in 2009.

"My congratulations to all involved in this 30 year battle for disclosure ... it was this awful state of affairs which led those of us who founded INQUEST to set it up. But it is mond-boggling to think that we were still arguing over this report 30 years later."

Terry Munyard, barrister at Garden Court Chambers and founding member of INQUEST, speaking in July 2009 on the decision to release the Cass report on the death of Blair Peach

“Let me record my thanks to and appreciation and admiration for the organisation INQUEST... That organisation, which is based in my constituency, has done amazingly good work over a long period in supporting the families of people who have died in custody.

Nothing is popular about such cases, but the organisation has been dogged in pursuing them. I think we should appreciate the value of civil society organisations of that kind which do so much to promote decent standards and liberty, and which help the House to produce better legislation.”

Jeremy Corbyn MP, speaking in the House of Commons 19 November 2008

Professor Francesca Klug OBE (LSE Centre for the Study of Human Rights) in presenting the Human Rights Award 2007 for organisations and non-legal individuals praised INQUEST for “working with families to build bridges between human emotions and the law.”

10 December 2007

“The decision to publish the Cass report is an extraordinary victory for INQUEST... Belatedly, it lifts another layer of camouflage from the secrets, lies and impunity that prevail in large sections of the British state and make such terrible events not merely possible but more likely...What INQUEST, Celia Stubbs and countless others around the world - say, the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Disappeared in Argentina - keep reminding us is not just that the instincts of the powerful are wrong, but that they can also be defeated, however long it may take.”

David Ransom, friend of Blair Peach and former editor of New Internationalist magazine, writing in June 2009.

Our priorities for 2009-2010 include:

• continued delivery of our award-winning casework service;
• campaigning for reform of the inquest system and ensuring greater rights for families in the Coroners and Justice Act ;
• developing work on INQUEST's proposal for a Standing Commission on Custodial Deaths;
• conducting policy work on the issues raised by deaths of people from black and minority ethnic communities in custody.

Without INQUEST's active and sustained campaigning, controversial proposals like those for ‘secret' inquests would have crept into law – and are still likely to be included as part of the forthcoming Coroners Bill. Every supporter, any donation, no matter how small, each book purchase, every subscription to Inquest Law magazine or membership of the INQUEST Lawyers Group will make a significant difference to our work.