Law and Religion Roundup: Funeral Director Pleads Guilty to Burial Offences

Preventing lawful burial

The Guardian reports that Robert Bush, funeral director at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull, has admitted giving families the wrong ashes, lying to them, stealing from them and stealing from charities. He pleaded guilty at Hull Crown Court to 30 counts of preventing a lawful and decent burial, and one of theft from twelve charities, including the Salvation Army and Macmillan Cancer Support, after 30 bodies and a quantity of ashes were found at the funeral home in 2024.

He had previously pleaded guilty to dozens of counts of fraud at a hearing in October and had been charged with 67 offences in total. He was granted bail pending a pre-sentence report, but Hilliard J said that “everybody accepts a custodial sentence is inevitable in this case”.

The Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management renewed its call for statutory regulation of the funeral industry in England and Wales where, unlike in Scotland, there is currently no universal system of inspection or enforcement across the industry. As we have previously noted, in October 2024 a statutory inquiry chaired by Sir Jonathan Michael recommended that the Government “should establish an independent statutory regulatory regime for funeral directors in England as a matter of urgency in order to safeguard the security and dignity of the deceased”.

Disclosure and Barring Service: faith groups

The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) is expanding its Faith in Safeguarding campaign nationally to raise awareness of the legal duty to refer – the process that organisations must follow by law when there are safeguarding concerns about individuals in regulated activity. According to the DBS, faith organisations are currently among the lower-referring sectors for barring referrals, and it suspects that many faith organisations may be unaware of their legal obligations under the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006. It is currently running a series of free, in-person pop-up clinics across England, offering practical guidance tailored to faith settings. Further details here.

Consultation on amending the Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2008

The Northern Ireland Department for Communities has opened a consultation on amending the Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2008. The consultation document, which includes a draft Bill, is the result of a review of the operation of the 2008 Act carried out in 2021. In the meantime, the Department held a separate consultation on the advisability of repealing the uncommenced section 167 of the Act (which would require institutions which are not charities under the law of Northern Ireland but which operate for charitable purposes in or from Northern Ireland to register there), and concluded that its repeal would avoid duplication of regulatory oversight and the imposition of disproportionate burdens on charities.

This latest consultation looks at:

• broadening the bodies with whom the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland can share information to include “persons discharging functions of a public nature”;
• the possibility of giving the Commission, and possibly its officials, an official warning power;
• expanding the scope of the power to remove trustees to include those trustees who have resigned from office;
• giving the Commission the power to issue directions to trustees not to undertake certain actions;
• extending automatic disqualification as a trustee following an inquiry to cover employment in such roles as an officer, agent or employee of a charity;
• changes to the requirement to prepare accounts;
• relaxing the audit/independent examination requirement for small charities; and
• “template reporting”. The consultation closes on 24 April.

Quick links

• Thérèse Rankin, Bates Wells: *Could withdrawing a job offer because of an applicant’s social media posts be discriminatory? Lessons from Ngole v Touchstone Leeds. *And a Happy Easter to all our readers!**

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