Photo by Marcus Winkler via Unsplash
We took the decision last week to publish all the documents developed by our working group of exceptional funeral directors, which we have been attempting to get to government decision makers for 18 months.
These documents are now all available from the Downloads page of this website.
Across the UK, funeral directors have been urgently disassociating themselves from the appalling acts that saw disgraced Hull funeral director Robert Bush sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment on Friday.
Membership of a trade association is often cited as an assurance when looking for a decent funeral director, but Robert Bush had been a member of one of the funeral director trade associations for 9 years, before allowing his membership to lapse in 2021.
In Hampshire, Hayley Bell DipFD was jailed in February this year for similarly preventing lawful burial and other crimes. Ms Bell was not only a member of another trade association but also a respected tutor for them.
Back in 2012, Channel 4 Dispatches broadcast ‘Undercover Undertaker’, exposing bad practice at Co-operative Funeralcare,a long standing member of a trade association, while in the same year, an ITV investigation exposed racism and bad practice at a branch of Funeral Partners, another large trade association member.
Clearly, trade association membership alone does not equal exceptional care of people who have died, or those who mourn them. For years, the funeral director trade associations have been left to self-regulate, and, with the sentencing of Robert Bush last week, this has been shown to have abjectly failed.
It was, therefore, jarring to see that the statement issued following the sentencing of Robert Bush on Friday by the Department of Health and Social Care and the Secretary of State, The Right Honourable Yvette Cooper on Friday afternoon included comment from two funeral director trade associations, both of which announced that they had met with the DHSC on Friday morning.
It is frustrating in the extreme that despite our best efforts to meet with the right people in government, including meeting with various MPs who are pressing for independent regulation of the funeral sector over the last 18 months, the voice of the GFG advocating for the public seems to be being ignored.
While we await any action from government, we are not prepared to leave it to simply proclaiming membership of a trade association as a means of identifying a good funeral director. We trust that all trade associations are urgently reviewing their policies and procedures to check for loopholes in the light of former members’ actions.
Trade associations exist for the benefit of their members.
Membership is voluntary.
There have evidently been multiple failings of oversight over the years.
The public need and deserve funeral directors who are willing to actively demonstrate good practice, and publicly commit themselves to doing so.
Good funeral directors are now committing themselves to both the Funeral Director Pledge and the Funeral Director Code so that the public have something simple and tangible to measure them against. Not just a logo showing membership of a trade association.
It’s time for change, and that must come from the people who want to prove they deserve your trust.
