Senior judge Sir Adrian Fulford has been announced as the chairman of the inquiry into the Southport murders.
Sir Adrian will oversee the two-phase statutory probe looking at the circumstances surrounding the attack before examining the wider issue of young people being drawn into extreme violence.
He was first called to the Bar in 1978 before becoming a judge in 1995 and a High Court judge (Queen’s Bench Division) in 2002.
He was appointed as a lord justice of appeal in 2013 – becoming vice president of the Court of Appeal criminal division in 2019.
When he retired from the Court of Appeal in 2022, Sir Adrian was one of the longest serving members of the senior judiciary of England and Wales.
The top judge sentenced former Met Police officer Wayne Couzens to a whole-life order for the murder of Sarah Everard in September 2021, and sat as the judge coroner for the Reading terror attacks inquest which concluded last year.
The Home Office said Sir Adrian was appointed as chairman for the Southport Inquiry after consultation with the victims and families of those killed in the attack by teenager Axel Rudakubana.
He plans to travel to meet the families as a “first priority” of the inquiry, the Home Office added.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Sir Adrian Fulford will bring a wealth of legal and criminal justice expertise to this role, and I am pleased he has agreed to chair the inquiry.”
Sir Adrian also sat as a judge of the International Criminal Court from 2003 to 2012, and was later elected as president of the court’s trial division.
He was appointed the first Investigatory Powers Commissioner in 2017, serving until 2019, overseeing how the UK intelligence services operate.
