ITV News’ investigation comes as former Hull funeral director Robert Bush is being sentenced this week after pleading guilty to offences including 30 counts of preventing a lawful and decent burial, ITV News’ Jonathan Brown reports
Warning: This article contains details that some people may find distressing.
When we asked how many funeral directors in the UK are operating without any oversight, nobody could tell us the answer.
It is one of the many unknowns that exist in a sector that, despite high-profile cases of bodies being left for weeks, or even months, decomposing in unrefrigerated funeral parlours, continues to go unregulated.
Outside of Scotland, where a statutory code of conduct was introduced for funeral directors in March 2025, there is nothing compelling UK funeral directors to abide by any national standards.
They currently do not have to have any specific qualifications or even facilities like refrigeration to legally operate in England, Wales or Northern Ireland unless they pay to become members of trade bodies – the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) or the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF).
Former Hull funeral director Robert Bush was a member of neither. This week he is being sentenced after pleading guilty to offences including 30 counts of preventing a lawful and decent burial.
Bush was in charge of Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in March 2024 when police recovered 35 bodies and ashes linked to more than 163 families from his premises.
But if officers had not been tipped off by a whistleblower, he might never have been caught.
Similarly, Richard Elkin and Hayley Bell, who ran Elkin & Bell Funeral Directors in Gosport, Hampshire, are believed to have deceived grieving families for months.
Bell and Elkin, who had a fake certificate suggesting he was NAFD accredited, were not members of either trade body and did not undergo regular inspections.
It was only when bailiffs raided their premises in December 2023 that the damp, unrefrigerated conditions they kept bodies in were uncovered.
Corinne Boulton enlisted her childhood friend Bell to conduct the funeral of her premature baby son Albie in June 2023.
It later emerged in court that his body had been “concealed” during a visit by an Environmental Health team the same month.
“It’s hard enough losing somebody you love, just to find out that their body was left to decay…” she said.
“I want the horrible details so mummy knows what he went through and he doesn’t do it alone but I still haven’t got those.”
Elkin and Bell were jailed for four years in February for offences including prevention of a lawful and decent burial after officers found the decomposing body of a man whose family were told had been cremated.
But failing to prevent bodies from decomposition does not always equate to criminal charges.
The family of Ron Parkin, an ex-miner from Clipstone in Nottinghamshire, have found documentation suggesting his body was incorrectly stored by his funeral director during the height of summer 2025 – and became “very green and bloated”.
The firm, which is not a member of the NAFD or SAIF, told ITV News it denies any wrongdoing and insists Ron was kept in a refrigerated room – blaming his condition on a delayed post-mortem.
Police have concluded that no criminal offence was committed.
Ron’s daughter Caroline said: “Just give them (the deceased) that bit of respect in death – that’s all they want, that’s all anybody can ask for for their loved ones.”
Not being a member of either one of the trade bodies, in and of itself, does not mean a company is doing anything untoward, but it does mean they are less likely to be held to account if they are.
So, in the absence of official data, we manually checked the names of more than 1,800 funeral directors in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, which are listed as active by Companies House, against the NAFD and SAIF databases.
That revealed that more than 560 firms appear to be going unchecked.
We also found that five active funeral directors were falsely stating online that they were members of one or both trade bodies.
Andrew Judd, chief executive of the NAFD, has been among those campaigning for statutory regulation of the funeral industry in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
In response to our findings, he said: “I think it illustrates that there are funeral directors operating outside of oversight and scrutiny and we need to close that gap.
“There is no formal register, there is no licensing regime in place, so the fact that there is no single source of truth in terms of every funeral director that is operating – I think that is a problem.”
A SAIF spokesperson added: “While professional bodies can regulate their own members, only statutory regulation can ensure every funeral director is held to the same enforceable standards and independent oversight.”
Both the SAIF and NAFD said that where required, businesses that we found are not members have been asked to remove their insignia from their premises and websites.
The Department of Health & Social Care said work is underway to drive progress after it accepted the recommendations of the Fuller Inquiry, which supported the idea of statutory regulation of the funeral sector last year.
A spokesperson added: “We are determined to root out all rogue operators from the funeral sector and ensure that every person in every setting is treated with respect and dignity in death.”
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