Disgraced funeral director Robert Bush has been jailed for 20 years in a case in which more than 200 victims described the devastating impact of his crimes.Bush, 48, was jailed as Hull Crown Court for 67 offences, including 30 counts of preventing a lawful burial. He breached the trust of grieving families “on an almost industrial scale” by keeping bodies for months after they should have been cremated, giving out the wrong ashes, taking money for funeral plans without making any arrangements, and stealing charity donations collected at services.He was sentenced on Friday for offences spanning 12 years at his business, Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull. Mr Justice Hilliard said he would serve half of his sentence before being released on parole. Although there were proposals to reduce this to one third, this has been “paused”, he said.The judge said that in the cases of 57 families who were given the wrong ashes or no ashes, about 40 of the deceased were kept for longer than a month before being cremated, including more than 200 days in one case.He said that boxes of ashes were found in many areas of Bush’s premises and there appeared to be no proper system to record where they were: “The majority of the remains were stored in an undignified manner and the identification of remains was wholly inadequate.” Telling Hull Crown Court about the terrible scenes police found at Legacy’s Hessle Road premises, he described how there were bodies on racks, two more lying on the floor and evidence of human putrefaction as well as excrement on the floor of a toilet. Adding: “The conditions were dreadful.”The judge said these details have been “traumatic in the extreme” for the families. Bush had told police he had been having issues with the refrigeration equipment and he could save money by not running all units.“I have no doubt there was plenty of money… if he had only chosen to apply it in that way,” Mr Justice Hilliard said. He added that what the dead lacked in dignity at the hands of Robert Bush “is more than made up for by the dignity with which the relatives have conducted themselves on their behalf in these proceedings”. Hull Crown Court heard that there were no sentencing guidelines and no maximum penalty for the offence of preventing a lawful burial, which accounted for 30 of the charges, and previous cases did not reflect what Bush was doing.Over four days, the court heard more than 200 statements from victims, with many choosing to read theirs in person and breaking down in tears.They included relatives of 31 people found at Legacy whose bodies should have been cremated, including the mother of an unborn baby who was found in a paper bag on the floor.Funeral director Robert Bush outside court (PA Wire)The judge also heard from more than 50 people who found out they had been given the wrong ashes for their loved ones when police raided the funeral home and found urns and packaging labelled with their names.The court heard that Bush’s offending came to light in March 2024 when he was on holiday in Arizona and asked the directors of another funeral firm to help with a body recovery while he was away.A casual worker at Legacy told the two men “out of the blue” that bodies had been at the site “for years” and described it as “a horror scene”.The men alerted the police, who searched the premises and found bodies stored on the racks of a cold storage area, with the vast majority “uncovered and in varying states of decomposition”.Police outside a branch of Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull in 2024 (PA Archive)The court heard the rest of the site was in a “lamentable state”, with ashes in mouldy boxes and even strewn across the floor, photographs left out of coffins and jewellery not returned to families.An investigation found that Bush had sold fraudulent funeral plans to more than 220 people, pocketing more than £500,000 in the process.Some of those affected gave statements to the court, describing how he had conned them out of their savings and left them without the safety net of knowing their funerals had been paid for.The court heard that Bush stole money from 12 charities by not passing on donations collected at services, including the Salvation Army, Macmillan Cancer Support, Help for Heroes, the RNLI and some local groups.A court drawing of Robert Bush at his sentencing hearing, which stretched for five days (PA)An investigation into his finances revealed that over seven years when he was defrauding his customers, Bush spent £42,000 on holidays, £21,000 on motorcycle racing and £17,400 on home improvements.Richard Wright KC, mitigating, said Bush had prioritised himself and his family over his customers, and was now treated as a “pariah – hated and despised”.Mr Justice Hilliard sentencing funeral director Robert Bush, 48, to twenty years in prison for 67 offences, including 30 counts of preventing a lawful burial, at Hull Crown Court, Kingston-upon-Hull. Picture date: Friday July 31, 2026. (PA)In April, Bush pleaded guilty to 30 counts of preventing a lawful and decent burial, and theft from the 12 charities.He had already admitted 30 counts of fraud by false representation relating to bodies found at the site, and four “foetus allegations” of fraud, where he presented ashes to women falsely saying that they were “the remains of their unborn”.Bush also pleaded guilty to a further charge of fraud, covering the ashes of 57 people between 2017 and 2024, and one of fraudulent trading relating to funeral plans between 2012 and 2024.‘The hardest part is not knowing why’: Son of woman found in funeral homeA son whose mother’s body was left in Robert Bush’s funeral parlour for six months said the “hardest part is not knowing why he did it”.Ron Marsh contacted Legacy Independent Funeral Directors when his mother Joyce Moulton died in September 2023, aged 98.He said Bush was professional and the service he organised was “excellent”, but the family never received Mrs Moulton’s ashes – and attempts to contact Legacy went unanswered.In March 2024, he was visited at his Surrey home by police family liaison officers who told him his mother’s body had been found during a raid at Legacy’s premises in Hull.Mr Marsh, 79, said: “I was gobsmacked. It was just not anything I ever thought happened, would happen, and certainly not happen to my mum.“I couldn’t comprehend something like that happening, so it was a struggle for me to understand what had happened, why it had happened, and why he had allowed it to happen.”He went on to say: “It was very traumatic, very upsetting. It’s probably not a strong enough word, but I can’t think of one.“But I just would like to know what the hell he thought he was doing, because the complete disregard for the dignity of 30 people, and their families, I can’t understand how someone could do it.“And, unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to get the chance to ask him, because he’s pleaded guilty, so he doesn’t have to take the stand.“It will be interesting to see what the mitigating circumstances are that his defence puts up, but as far as I’m concerned, he is a very despicable man with absolutely no morals or human compassion.”Mr Marsh said his mother was “a grafter” who worked while raising him and his brother as a single parent, before marrying her second husband.She returned to her home city of Hull to be near her siblings after being widowed in 1990.Mrs Moulton had dementia and died in hospital in September 2023, two weeks after falling at home.Mr Marsh contacted Bush after seeing business cards for Legacy at the morgue, and being told by a morgue attendant that “they’re very good”.“He was professional, courteous, a businessman,” he said.“We had the service. It was excellent. You could not have wished for a better service.“When we paid the bill, he said: ‘Your mother will be cremated within the next two to three days.’ I thought that’s it, done deal.”When the family had not received Mrs Moulton’s ashes by December, Mr Marsh attempted to contact Bush, but his phone calls and emails went unreturned.After finding out that Bush had never cremated Mrs Moulton’s body, her family have had a second funeral paid for by Hull City Council, and her ashes have been scattered in one of their memorial gardens.Mr Marsh said: “At the time, it looked like he was a genuine, bona fide, funeral director – three funeral homes, a successful person, and the service itself was very professional.“But it has left me wondering, how many times has this happened somewhere else, maybe not to the extent of 30 odd bodies, but have other funeral people not carried out their duties, as they should do?“Because there is no legislation with regard to funeral directors, and therefore, there’s no checking to see that once a funeral service has been had, if it’s not at the crematorium or at the church, that body has actually been either cremated or buried.“So it still gets to me and I think it will for the rest of my life.“But it’s the not knowing why he did it that is really more upsetting than anything else. And I don’t think we’ll ever know.”Mr Marsh paid tribute to his mother as “pugnacious, but generous to a fault”.He said: “When she went back up to Hull, and in the bungalow, there were a load of what she termed old people, albeit she was in her 80s, but there were old people around her who needed help, and she used to do the shopping for them.“She always wanted to help people, and she was quite fearless.”Prime Minister backs calls for regulation of funeral home sectorThe sentencing comes as Andy Burnham backed the regulation of funeral homes and mortuaries.The Prime Minister offered his sympathies to the families of victims of Robert Bush.A separate independent inquiry into the crimes of David Fuller, who abused at least 100 dead women and girls in hospital mortuaries in south-east England, recommended regulation of the funeral sector to prevent similar crimes being committed again.Speaking on a visit to Sheffield, Mr Burnham said: “I do back those calls, and there were recommendations in the Fuller Report that will be implemented because we have seen appalling situations like this before.“I feel for the families and I know it’ll be a difficult day for them with these matters in court again. I was truly horrified when I heard what had happened. Appalling for any family to go through that. This needs a proper response in terms of the regulation needed, to make sure no family goes through that again.“People, I think, would assume that the highest standards apply to this area and we’ve got to make sure that they do apply and that there can’t be any repeat of what we’ve seen.”