The Army snipers' culture of 'big boys rules' led to the death of a trainee marksman who shot himself in the face, a report has found.

Soldiers on a training course were “mistakenly held in higher regard than their limited sniper competencies and experience merited,” a Service Inquiry has concluded, due to the “culture, ethos and camaraderie [of] organisations considered special or elite”.

The inquiry into the accident which killed Lance Corporal (LCpl) Joe Spencer, said inadequate safety supervision and poor leadership had led directly to the fatal shooting.

Unsafe behaviour and practices had been allowed to go unchallenged and mandated procedures were ignored. “There were many opportunities where getting this right might have broken the chain of events,” Air Marshal Sir Richard Garwood, the Director General of the Defence Safety Authority said.

The report said that soldiers with a specialised role who had achieved a high level of training often felt they needed less supervision, a culture Air Marshal Garwood described as "big boys rules". Whilst such an attitude might be appropriate in "special [or] elite" units, he said allowing it to exist on the Sniper Operators' Course was "particularly inappropriate" and had resulted in "lower levels of supervision".