AN inquest into the death of a 'skipper' killed after a huge tree fell on a houseboat he was visiting has had to be postponed for the second time.

Paul Welch, 53, was killed when a massive oak tree crashed down a steep embankment at Sailor’s Creek in the Fal estuary near Flushing and onto a houseboat below in which Mr Welch was staying on Saturday evening (January 2) at around 5pm.

Mr Welch was locally known as the owner/skipper of the Lowestoft beam sailing trawler, Keewaydin, built in 1913.

At an inquest hearing today, west Cornwall coroner Andrew Cox reluctantly agreed to postpone the inquest until June next year after hearing submissions from Mr Welch's partner's family's counsel, Thomas Beaumont. The inquest had already been adjourned from July.

Mr Welch's wife Harriet Thody chose not to attend the inquest at the last moment, although other members of her family were there.

Mr Beaumont submitted an application for an adjournment to give more time to look into whether there had been a missed opportunity to identify and remedy the tree that fell on the boat and to see whether it could it have been avoided.

Mr Cox said he was minded to refuse that application because it was not the inquest's responsibility to determine that and the submission for the adjournment had come far too late.

However, Mr Beaumont also objected to a late statement being submitted to the inquest by the landowner Mr Nicholas Trefusis, the owner of the Trefusis Estate and a former Deputy Lieutenant for Cornwall, without the family seeing it and being able to respond to it.

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Mr Beaumont said: "I will have to take any instructions from the family on the statement of Mr Trefusis and they may want to ask questions."

He said he wouldn't be able to do that in the time allotted by the inquest and having only ten minutes would be 'highly unsatisfactory'.

He also rejected a proposal from Mr Cox to not have the statement read out at the inquest saying that that would also be unsatisfactory as the family wouldn't know what was in it.

After consultation with the family, Mr Beaumont requested the inquest was adjouned, despite the length of time before it could be held.

Mr Cox said the chief coroner's guidance was that the family should be put at the heart of all inquests and therefore he had no choice other than to adjourn. The court diary was full until June next year and it would take place then.