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"This, argued Asserson, is contrary to article 9 of the human rights convention, which protects freedom of religion. In his view, Hassell’s policy amounted to a blanket and disproportionate refusal to respect the beliefs of Jewish and Muslim people, whose religions require speedy burial following death. It also interfered with their private and family lives, contrary to article 8."

The difficulty is that a coroner's statutory duty has been found to always, or almost always override religious and cultural objection (see R (Rotsztein) v HM Senior Coroner for Inner London North [2015] EWHC 2764 (Admin)). However, in Rotsztein, this was in relation to post-mortems of Jewish persons and the interplay between the requirement to carry out invasive post-mortems if required against religious and cultural objections.

Here, it seems a more obtuse point - if there is a back log of post-mortems, or once the autopsy has been concluded, should persons of Jewish or Muslim faiths be put to the front of the queue because their religious views require prompt burial?

All post-mortems must be carried out without undue delay to fulfil the statutory obligation under regulation 11. "Undue delay" must take into account how busy the service is.

Seems to me that the coroner here is stuck between a rock and a hard place - process those bodies where religion demands quick burial but to the detriment of all other users and risk a JR from families of non-faith backgrounds; or process all bodies on a cab-rank basis but risk JR from families of Jewish/Islamic background.