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 said he was ‘shocked’ by the lack of policing over the sector, calling it an ‘unregulated free for all’ where funeral directors need no licence, qualifications or training.
‘I had assumed, like I suspect most of the public would assume, that they were regulated before,’ he added.
‘Having discovered that they weren’t regulated, to discover the implication of that being that you could theoretically have a rogue funeral director, and indeed, there are some rogue funeral directors that have been found out recently.’
He added: ‘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.’
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.
Publishing his latest findings on Tuesday, he urged the Government to bring in a regulator for funeral directors in England as a ‘matter of urgency’.
‘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.
‘We need a regime that will not tolerate any form of abuse or any practices that compromise the security and dignity of the deceased.’
Sir Jonathan said there were ‘some really quite horrifying examples of poor practice’ in the funeral sector.
He said: ‘I found that the funeral directors that I was meeting were really caring and professional people, but at the same time, it was clear that there was significant difference in practice across the country, and we can’t avoid the fact that there were some really quite horrifying examples of poor practice.’
Asked for examples, the inquiry chair said: ‘We’re not set up to investigate individual examples of poor practice. But there have been a number of examples in the media of misbehaviour where the deceased have been neglected and have been abused fundamentally by neglect, predominantly.’
Sir Jonathan said the latest report follows ‘distressing’ allegations of neglect as police investigate a funeral directors in Hull.
Humberside Police said detectives had been working ‘around the clock’ since concerns were raised at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in March ‘about the storage and management processes relating to care of the deceased at the funeral directors’.
Setting out how the regulator should have the power to issue licences, demand compulsory standards, inspect funeral directors and take enforcement action, Sir Jonathan said he hopes publishing the report will help ministers and funeral homes 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’.
It should be mandatory for customers to be given information about how funeral directors will care for their loved ones and what measures are in place to protect them so the industry is more transparent in how it operates, the report added.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the Government was ‘committed to preventing any similar atrocities happening again and ensuring that the deceased are safeguarded and treated with dignity’.
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