Every funeral home in the country faces a spot check after concern over widespread mistreatment of the dead.
The Government has ordered councils to carry out a check of every funeral home in an attempt to reassure the public.
Last week The Telegraph revealed six police investigations are underway into allegations of funeral directors that have left bodies to decompose, kept the deceased in a self-storage unit or have had ashes gone missing.
Simon Hoare, the minister for local government, told The Telegraph that “litmus test” checks of funeral parlours will be carried out by environmental health officers to provide “immediate reassurance” to the general public while the Government works on a plan to regulate the industry.
Funeral homes are not regulated and there is no statutory inspection regime. Businesses can choose whether to join trade bodies that carry out these checks. Grieving families have called on the Government to urgently regulate the sector following the Legacy scandal in East Yorkshire, where 35 bodies were recovered from a funeral business in March.
The Ministry of Justice is expected to launch a consultation on regulation in the next few months. Mr Hoare said that the “interim period” before regulation is potentially introduced “is all about public confidence”.
He added: “We need to ensure that there is public confidence in this, more often than not, very sad and traumatic period in families’ lives. You’re dealing with the funeral of a loved one, you have an innate expectation that your relative is going to be treated with respect, with decorum, and with decency and dignity and everything is going to be done above board and properly.
“I have little or no doubt that we will find at the end of this particular process that the public can have confidence in the sector.”
Mr Hoare, alongside Mike Freer, the justice minister, has been leading the Government’s response to the Legacy funeral scandal. He said: “It is simply the local authority, with the support of a senior person from the trade body, making a visit to each and every funeral directors in their locality to effectively just have a look around… It’s just a question of, does everything look right? Seem right?”
Councils will be expected to carry out the visits with the support of an expert from one of the funeral director trade bodies, and then feed back to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
Mr Hoare added: “We find ourselves in this strange situation in a country which is phenomenally well organised and regulated, where there is a raft of regulations if one wants to open a tanning salon, or a tattoo parlour, or an ice cream truck, but no such requirements for a funeral director.
“We don’t think this is endemic. But I think both of us [Mr Hoare and Mr Freer] are persuaded that the expectation of unenforceable decency isn’t sustainable in the current system.”
Mr Hoare admitted that it was “naïve” to assume that all funeral directors would operate honourably. He said: “I suppose one could say it’s just naivety because human nature – if it can make a quick buck, will make a quick buck. We’re an entrepreneurial species.”
Absence of regulation
In the absence of regulation, The Telegraph asked what powers those carrying out these visits will have if they spot anything concerning.
Mr Hoare said: “In the first instance, the funeral directors are not obliged to open the door. But our understanding is that they will because failure to do so would just beg ‘Well, why ever not? if you’ve got nothing to hide, why do you not want us to see it?’
“The only piece of legislation which exists, strangely enough, is the 1867 Act, which refers to preventing a lawful and decent burial, against which prosecutions can be launched. There is clearly a full raft of public health and environmental health regulations as well, which prosecutions can be drawn from.
“We can, of course, in extremis, ask the police to assist us in these matters. I honestly don’t think or don’t envisage that it would come to that,” he added.
Under the current system, the only way for families to seek justice is through a police investigation, but families are concerned that the mistreatment of their deceased loved ones is not always taken seriously by police officers.
Some families said these criminal probes had been going on for almost two years, and others said they were initially ignored by the police when they tried to report concerns.
Police slow to act
One bereaved relative, who had concerns about the way the body of her grandmother had been treated at Elkin and Bell Funerals in Gosport, said the family had reported the funeral home to the police several years ago but Hampshire Police had been slow to act.
It was only when bailiffs entered the funeral home in December, after the undertakers had not paid their rent for over a year, that two decomposing bodies were discovered.
Christopher Lucas-Jones, the founder and managing director of bailiffs Absolute Enforcement, said that when his agent rang the police and told them about the bodies they had discovered, the police initially refused to visit the premises and told them to contact Trading Standards instead. It was only after the bailiff threatened to lodge a complaint with the inspector of the police force that they agreed to visit the premises.
A Hampshire Police spokesman said: “We want to reassure the community that these allegations are being thoroughly investigated, and all families who are connected to this investigation have been spoken to and are being supported by police.”
In a joint statement, the two trade bodies that will be helping councils to carry out the checks said: “The National Association Of Funeral Directors (NAFD) and the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF) are working closely with the Government to build a format for the visits, which could begin in the coming weeks.We have provided a checklist using the combined experience of our inspectors and against an agreed set of shared principles consistent with the standards set out in our respective Codes of Practice.
“SAIF and the NAFD are confident that all of our members will cooperate fully with local authorities and take the opportunity to demonstrate their quality and standards if a visit is requested – and we extend that to all other funeral directors in England too, as it is vitally important we reassure the public that they can trust in the compassion and professionalism of their chosen funeral director.”
