Deaths at Deepcut army barracks

The Deaths at Deepcut Barracks is a series of incidents that took place involving the deaths in obscure circumstances of five British Army trainee soldiers at the Princess Royal Barracks, Deepcut in the county of Surrey, between 1995 and 2002.

The most recent inquests took place at Woking Coroners Court from 2016 to 2019. General Lord Dannatt, a former Chief of the General Staff, in 2016 stated on BBC Newsnight to Emily Maitlis that it was his view that "there should be a public inquiry into the Deepcut Barracks deaths which would be practical and reasonable".^[1] A fourth inquest for one of the recruits, James Collinson, initially due in 2020-21, was halted in 2019. His death remains a mystery and an open verdict.^[2]

In June 2021, it was revealed on BBC Newsnight that a fifth recruit, Anthony Bartlett, had died at the barracks in July 2001 from an alleged drug overdose.

The fatal shootings, self-inflicted according to legal authorities that investigated them at the time of the original events, of recruits in repetition in similar circumstances at the same facility, in a comparatively limited period of time, drew substantial press and media attention to the incidents, and became an extended legal contest between the families of the trainee soldiers concerned and the legal authorities involved as to what had actually occurred. This culminated in a repeat of the original inquests, in one case a hiatus of 20 years occurred until a new inquest was conducted.

This lengthy legal contest compelled Surrey Police authorities to investigate further and created a pressure to reveal camp life and its organisation for recruits. The details that emerged over nearly two decades of Police and media investigation, interviews with recruits, television documentaries, and a legal review, illustrated a plethora of changes required for the Army, especially the Royal Logistic Corps, to make changes to how it recruited and treated military trainees. Senior army officers presided over a 'catastrophic' failure in their duty of care towards recruits, an influential Commons committee revealed in 2005.^[3]