Rogue funeral directors ‘can set up at home and keep dead bodies in the garage’ --[Reported by Umva mag]

Anybody can set themselves up as a funeral director and keep dead bodies in their garage, the chairman of an inquiry set up following the crimes of ‘morgue monster’ David Fuller has warned.

Sir Jonathan Michael called for urgent policing of the sector, calling it an ‘unregulated free for all’ with people ‘shocked’ to find that funeral directors need no licence, qualifications or training.

‘There are no organisations in England with the power to prevent funeral directors operating on the basis of poor practice or neglect not deemed to be criminal,’ he said.

‘The fact is that anyone can set themselves up as a funeral director. They could do it from their home and keep the bodies of the deceased in their garage without anybody being able to stop them.

‘That cannot be right.’

Sir Jonathan went on: ‘We need a regulatory regime that will not tolerate any form of abuse or any practices that compromise the security and dignity of the deceased.

The inquiry was set up to examine how Fuller, a maintenance worker, was able to spend more than a decade creeping into the mortuaries of two Kent hospitals and abusing the bodies of at least 101 women and girls.

Its first phase found ‘serious failings’ at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust which enabled Fuller to commit his crimes.

The second phase is investigating how the dead are looked after more broadly across England, in settings including private mortuaries, private ambulances and the funeral sector.

The interim report details responses from funeral organisations where incidents alleged include a funeral assistant who took a photo of a person being embalmed, of people being left to decompose or covered in mouldy sheets, and one allegation of sexual assault against a dead woman by a funeral director in the 1990s.

Sir Jonathan said findings may indicate ‘systemic failure’ to protect people who died through a lack of standard policies.

He said he hopes it will ‘assist the Government and the funeral sector itself to take steps that assure the public that the sector is fit for purpose and will not tolerate any form of abuse or practice which compromises the security and dignity of the deceased, including that caused by neglect’.

The inquiry has recommended that the Government set up an independent statutory regulation for funeral directors in England as a ‘matter of urgency’.

It sets out how it should include enforcement powers, a licensing scheme and compulsory standards that funeral directors should be inspected on regularly.

The report also recommended that customers should be given mandatory information by funeral directors about the care of their loved ones and measures to protect them to ensure transparency.

Sir Jonathan said the new report comes following the ‘distressing’ reports of neglect in the funeral care sector, as police are investigating allegations against a funeral directors in Hull.

Humberside Police said detectives had been working ‘around the clock’ since concerns were raised at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors on March 8 ‘about the storage and management processes relating to care of the deceased at the funeral directors’.

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