Legacy Independent Funeral Directors: Bereaved families join calls for regulation of ‘free-for-all’ funeral industry
Families betrayed by Legacy Independent Funeral Directors have urged the Government to act now to regulate an industry which operates with very few rules or oversight.
Relatives struggling to come to terms with what happened to loved ones entrusted to Robert Bush’s Hull-based firm were shocked to find that there is no specific regulatory regime for funeral directors in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and anyone can set up an operation.
They have joined families and organisations already calling for regulation, after a series of other scandals involving mistreatment of the dead.
Karen Dry, who entrusted the funerals of both her parents to Bush and has organised regular vigils for affected families, said: “We cannot put any, not one single more family, through what we have been through for the sake of an absolute disgrace of a funeral director.”
She said: “I think everybody assumes that there’s laws to protect the deceased. And there isn’t. Not one. I find it shocking.”
Tristan Essex, whose grandmother Jessie Stockdale’s remains were found at Legacy, said: “The fact that there’s no regulation is absolutely ridiculous.
“They control everything else we do, why can’t they do right by us when we die?”
He said: “The Government should have sorted it out a long time ago, there’s no excuse for not having done it.”
And Michaela Baldwin, whose stepfather, Danny Middleton was one of the bodies found, said: “The fact that it’s harder to open a sandwich shop than a funeral parlour is absolutely disgusting.”
Earlier this year, Richard Elkin and Hayley Bell, who ran Elkin and Bell Funerals in Gosport, Hampshire, were jailed for four years by a judge who heard details of bodies covered in maggots, shedding skin and lying in their own fluids, as they were decomposing.
The families involved said that the industry had been operating “in the shadows” for far too long, adding: “We are calling loudly and clearly for urgent, accountable regulation.”
Their calls was reinforced by Hampshire’s Assistant Chief Constable Tony Rowlinson, and Hampshire and Isle of Wight’s Police and Crime Commissioner Donna Jones.
Ms Jones said officers investigating the Elkin and Bell case “discovered a judicial black hole”, as they had to rely on common law charges because there is no legislation to prosecute the crimes they committed.
The call for regulation of the funeral sector also came from the David Fuller Inquiry, after chairman Sir Jonathan Michael discovered it was an “unregulated free-for-all”, where anyone could set themselves up as a funeral director, work at home, and keep bodies in their garages if they wished.
The independent investigation, which looked at care arrangements for people in death after necrophiliac killer David Fuller’s mortuary abuse of at least 100 dead women and girls, ended last year.
MPs have called for regulation after a BBC investigation revealed how babies’ bodies were kept at a funeral director’s house in Leeds.
One woman described how she found out that her dead son had been put in a baby bouncer in a funeral director’s living room. But police later decided no crime had been committed.
Two industry bodies, the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) and the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF), have codes of practice but these do not have statutory force and membership is voluntary.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigated the industry six years ago, mainly looking at price transparency and competition in the sector.
It recommended that an inspection and registration scheme to monitor the quality of funeral director services should be introduced in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as “a first step in the establishment of a broader regulatory regime for funeral services”.
It said the NAFD and SAIF should not be responsible for monitoring and enforcing compliance as there would be a conflict of interest arising from the dual roles of regulator and promoter of members’ interests, and it recommended a new body should be created.
The then Conservative government responded to the CMA’s recommendations by saying a self-regulatory approach was more appropriate but, after the Legacy scandal broke, it said it intended to call for evidence before consulting on proposals for regulation.
After the 2024 general election, the Labour Government said it was considering the possibility of “some form” of regulation, but that any measures would need to be “proportionate”.
In autumn 2025, the Government said it was committed to getting funeral regulation right and that work on the matter was being undertaken on a cross-departmental basis.
Earlier this year, the Government said it would decide by the summer whether statutory regulation of the industry should be introduced.