Families say funeral director gave them wrong ashes in Hull scandal

Robert Bush pleaded guilty at Hull Crown Court in April 2026 to 67 criminal offences after families said the former funeral director handed back wrong ashes and kept bodies at his Hull business for years. The Crown Prosecution Service said the pleas included 30 counts of preventing a lawful and decent burial, with fraud-related offences also part of the case.

Police discovered human remains at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull in 2024, exposing what court reports described as offending that stretched over about 12 years. Reports said 31 bodies, including a stillborn baby, had been kept at the premises instead of being cremated or buried as relatives had been told. One report said the baby’s remains were found in an envelope on the floor of a cold room and had been left there for nearly two years before they were discovered in March 2024.

The scale of the findings reached far beyond one family. Reports said more than 100 sets of ashes were stored at the business, and some families were handed the ashes of strangers. One BBC report said there could be up to 240 victim impact statements from people affected by the case, underscoring how many bereaved families were drawn into the fallout.

Families arriving at court described pain that cut through every part of the funeral process, where trust should have been absolute. Bush, formerly of Kirk Ella in East Yorkshire and later living in Otley, West Yorkshire, apologised as he arrived at court, but families rejected the apology. They told the court that the betrayal went to the core of what they had paid for and believed they had received, while the case was described as a breach of trust on an almost industrial scale.

The episode has thrown a harsh light on death-care oversight in Hull, where bodies were left in poor conditions and ashes were stored at the premises over an extended period before police intervened. For grieving parents and relatives, the basic safeguards they should have been able to expect were simple: that remains would be identified correctly, kept separately, and cremated or buried as promised. In this case, those safeguards failed repeatedly.