The National Archives issued a research guide in March 2026 explaining how to find the papers of the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry, the statutory inquiry into the Novichok nerve-agent death of Dawn Sturgess in Salisbury on July 8, 2018. It is a short, practical document: what the collection is called, what is in it, what is missing, and roughly how much of what did arrive has been blacked out before release.
A series with a report inside it
The transferred material sits in one series, titled “Records created by the Independent Inquiry into the circumstances of Dawn Sturgess’ death in Salisbury on 8 July 2018.” It holds the open-hearing evidence and the final report, officially “The Dawn Sturgess Inquiry, Report into the death of Dawn Sturgess by The Rt Hon Lord Hughes of Ombersley,” House of Commons Paper HC 1525 (Session 2024-26), ordered printed on December 4, 2025. A correction followed on January 29, 2026: on page 41, paragraph 3.61, “a disciplinary investigation” was changed to “an incident investigation.”
Every item in the series carries a unique reference number, assigned through the Inquiry’s own document management system before transfer; the same numbers run through the transcripts and hearing records. The Chair selected which open-hearing documents went forward for permanent preservation, under the Records Collection Policy, the internal rule setting out what a public body hands to the Archives and what it keeps back. That transfer rests on three statutes: the Inquiries Act 2005, which created the Inquiry; the Inquiry Rules 2006, which govern how it is run; and the Public Records Act 1958, which decides what counts as a public record and when it can be opened. The Inquiry cost £8.3 million.
From an adjourned inquest to a statutory inquiry
The Inquiry did not start as an inquiry. HM Senior Coroner for Wiltshire and Swindon, David Ridley, opened an inquest into Sturgess’s death on July 19, 2018, and adjourned it the same day. The Rt Hon Heather Hallett DBE was appointed to conduct the inquest in January 2021. On November 18, 2021, then-Home Secretary Priti Patel announced that a statutory inquiry would absorb the investigative work the inquest had already done. The Inquiry was formally constituted on March 17, 2022, under the Rt Hon Lord Hughes of Ombersley, a retired justice of the UK Supreme Court. Public hearings opened in Salisbury on October 14, 2024, before moving to London, and the report was published on December 4, 2025.
The Terms of Reference asked the Chair to establish who Sturgess was and how, when, and where she died, under the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, and to identify, so far as the Inquiries Act 2005 allowed, where responsibility for her death lay. What the Inquiry concluded on that second point is set out in the report itself. It is not set out in the archive guide this article is drawn from.
What happened to her
Dawn Sturgess died at Salisbury District Hospital on July 8, 2018. The report records the immediate medical cause as hypoxic ischemic brain injury and intracranial brain hemorrhage, both attributed to Novichok poisoning. Her death followed an earlier Novichok attack in the same city by about four months. No other confirmed Novichok poisoning has occurred in the UK, before or since.
Why part of the hearing was closed
Some Inquiry sessions were held in closed session. The Inquiry’s stated reasons were the protection of individuals connected with the case, national security, and policing methods. All material bound for the Archives, open or closed, went through a sensitivity review, the standard process for screening material before public release. The guide does not say what, specifically, required protection under those three headings in this case. It names the categories and goes no further.
What has not been transferred, and how much of what has is blacked out
The closed-hearing evidence has not moved. It remains with the Home Office, still classified, and no transfer date appears anywhere in the record. Of the open-hearing material that has been transferred, around 35% carries redactions of personal data or falls under the Inquiry’s own Restriction Order, the formal mechanism a chair can use to limit what evidence is made public, and is withheld rather than released in full. The guide does not break that figure down by document, subject, or hearing date. It states the proportion and stops there.
None of this touches on what the closed sessions actually discussed, or on who the Inquiry found responsible for Sturgess’s death. The guide was written to describe an archive, not to summarize a report. It states what the series is called, what has arrived, what proportion is redacted, and what still sits with the Home Office. It does not say more than that, because it was never built to.