Police will gain faster access to mobile phone data to help track missing persons in a surprise change to federal law after state coroners raised concern that authorities could arrive too late to help people in distress.

The change will make it simpler for police to ask mobile phone companies to help locate people using the “triangulation” of their wireless signal, a key step in trying to find people in emergencies.

Coroners called for action on the federal law after a series of cases including the death of Thomas Hunt, 27, who went missing in Sydney in March 2017 but was only identified the following month when his body was found on Bondi Beach.

With concern over the law growing, a coroner wrote to Communications Minister Michelle Rowland last month to ask for changes so police had clear authority to ask mobile phone operators for rapid access to location data.

The existing law allows telecommunications companies to supply the location to authorities when they believe the information is “reasonably necessary” to prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to life or health.

But a series of coronial inquests have highlighted situations in which police are not sure whether the threshold has been reached to justify gaining access to the data, slowing down the search for missing persons.

In a report issued last month, the NSW Coroner highlighted the problem with the law in the disappearance of an unnamed man, CD, who went missing in Sydney in March 2019.

In that case, police considered but decided against seeking the mobile phone data because they were not sure there was a “serious or imminent” threat to life, so they chose instead to arrange a helicopter patrol on the coast around Little Bay, in Sydney’s east.

The search was unsuccessful and CD, who was 36 and recently married with a baby son, has never been found.

In the case of Thomas Hunt, who had a partner and two children, police also decided the threshold had not been reached to ask for the location data.

NSW Deputy Coroner Erin Kennedy concluded the inquiry into the disappearance of CD by recommending changes to Section 287 of the Telecommunications Act to remove the word “imminent” from its reference to a “serious and imminent” threat to life or health.

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As well, the Deputy Coroner asked for urgent change to Section 287 so police could act on the “suspicion” of a threat rather than a “belief” that one had emerged.

Rowland revealed her intention to change the law after taking the proposal to the Labor caucus on Tuesday and gaining approval for the amendment.

“It means telecommunications companies can disclose information where they have a reasonable belief that disclosure will lesson a serious threat to life,” she said.

“It will remove the requirement that the threat be ‘imminent’ because that requirement can be impossible to show in many cases, including in the case of missing people.“

Rowland noted that the coroner’s report last month was not the first time the issue had been raised and it became clear there was an “unrealistic bar” to the release of information.

“This bill deserves the support of both chambers of Parliament so law enforcement and emergency service organisations can do what they do best – save lives,” she said.