Families are being forced to endure agonising waits for a verdict after the death of a loved one, due to a backlog of thousands of inquests that could take years to clear.

There are concerns that the antiquated inquest system is putting lives at risk by failing to identify and highlight the cause of potentially avoidable deaths early on.  The failures have revived calls for the system to be overhauled and subjected to greater scrutiny. 

The concerns were highlighted last week following the conclusion of the inquests into the deaths of Ian Tomlinson and of the 7/7 victims.  Campaign groups said both inquests showed that it was vital for the system to be well funded. 

"A properly conducted and resourced inquest, as shown by the Tomlinson and 7/7 inquests, plays a key role in scrutinising the role of the state in contentious cases and in upholding public health and safety," said Deborah Coles, co-director of campaign group Inquest. 

"Delay in holding inquests not only impacts on a bereaved family's grieving but frustrates the learning process, as proper public scrutiny of any individual or systemic failings is delayed, resulting in the ever-present risk of further deaths. 

A "postcode lottery" has meant that many parts of the country endure long waits for inquests because coroners are inundated with work. 

Research by think-tank Demos for the Commission on Assisted Dying has raised startling questions about public access to coroners' records, and the backlog of inquests.  Demos found that, over the past two years in Leicester alone, at least five families have had to wait four years or more for an inquest into their loved ones' deaths.  Demos said that there appeared to be no formal system to allow the public to find inquests records from the past 10 years. 

Concerns about disclosure are compounded because coroners do not have to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.  Demos found that, when some coroners retired, they took their inquest records with them and there was no official system to track them.  The think-tank said that in some cases older records had been destroyed or filed inconsistently. 

"It's remarkable that in this day and age we have such an archaic and inconsistent system of recording deaths' said Louise Bazalgette, a researcher at Demos.  "The whole process - lengthy delays in coroners" examinations, the fact that records are not subject to FOI - harks back to an era when death was shrouded in secrecy. 

"We know virtually nothing about how people die in Britain - the more open we can be about death, the more we can do to prevent unpleasant deaths." 

The pressures on the system are expected to increase as coroners' budgets are cut because of local authority cutbacks.  The latest figures are for 2009 and show that almost 14,000 inquests were open at the end of the year, with the average inquest taking 26 weeks to be completed after a death. 

But in some areas, the average wait for an inquest was far longer, leading to a backlog.  In Exeter and greater Devon, where the typical waiting time for the completion of an inquest was 50 weeks, there were 246 outstanding inquests. 

The previous government created the post of chief coroner to oversee the system, improve efficiency and bring in more accountability, but the coalition government scrapped it to save money. 

"The coroners' service has been running for over 900 years, and it seems shocking there is still no one in charge," said Alison Cox, chief executive of Cardiac Risk in the Young, a charity campaigning for the post to be reintroduced.