How can the government ensure inquiries are set up to succeed?

Public inquiries have become a central feature of the UK’s response to crises, with a record 27 public inquiries currently underway. In 2025 alone the UK government announced seven new inquiries into a topics including failures in health care settings, the terrorist attacks, and historic police conduct; the level of commitment to inquiries from both the public and the government shows no sign of decreasing.

Despite their popularity, recent experience shows that the system is not working, and is undermining public trust. Inquiries are becoming larger, are taking longer and costing more but too often fail to deliver meaningful change and mistakes and disasters reoccur. These issues – that there are too many, they cost too much and take too long – are rooted in deeper, underlying problems. For reform to be effective it needs to be targeted at these problems. Our analysis shows that these underlying problems can be exacerbated by decisions made by ministers when inquiries are set up and that ministers need better guidance to support their decision making. 

This analysis paper sets out the underlying drivers that are leading to unsatisfactory inquiries, and makes a series of recommendations for reforms designed to target these issues to ensure inquiries are fit for purpose and better able to serve victims and the public.