A five-day sentencing hearing at Hull Crown Court ended on Friday 31 July 2026 with Robert Bush jailed for 20 years and disqualified as a company director for 14 years, bringing to a close a Humberside Police investigation that has run for more than two years. With the case now concluded, the agencies involved — police, two councils, prosecutors, the region’s police and crime commissioner and Victim Support — have set out in detail what a two-year enquiry into Bush’s funeral business uncovered.
Bush, 48, formerly of Kirk Ella in East Yorkshire, was sentenced for all 67 offences he ultimately pleaded guilty to, relating to his running of Legacy Independent Funeral Directors on Hessle Road.
Speaking after sentencing
Detective Superintendent Alan Curtis, the senior investigating officer, said: “He exploited people during some of the most difficult times in their lives, taking money for services that were not delivered and failing families at a time they needed him most.”
Curtis said investigators found a business that looked entirely different once they got past the reception desk: “When we first attended the premises, it quickly became clear that there were two different sides to the business. On the one hand Bush’s business which was open to the public presented under the façade of being organised and well presented, then delving behind the scenes depicted one of complete disarray.” He said that same disorder ran through Bush’s finances, accounts and record-keeping.
He described the scale of the operation in numbers: officers seized just short of 3,000 exhibits and 12,000 items of disclosure, took 800 witness statements, and identified more than 300 victims — though Curtis said it was impossible to know exactly how many people had truly been affected. He called it the biggest and most complex investigation in Humberside Police’s history, and thanked the range of agencies who had worked on it: Hull City Council, East Riding of Yorkshire Council, the coroner, the Crown Prosecution Service, the region’s police and crime commissioner, bereavement services, and the National Crime Agency, which provided specialist and forensic support. The force’s own Regional Organised Crime Unit supplied forensic accountants, and Victim Support ran a dedicated line that took more than 1,500 calls in its first week alone.
Curtis returned, at the end, to why the investigation had mattered: “From the moment this investigation began, our focus has been on the families left heartbroken by what happened at Legacy Funeral Directors. Behind every enquiry and every item of evidence was a person who had died, a family who had lost a loved one, all of whom were seeking answers, and where possible, some measure of resolution.”
Other agencies echoed that focus on the families involved. Laura Tams, deputy chief crown prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, called the case “some of the most serious breaches of trust possible in the funeral industry,” listing preventing lawful burial, defrauding families of services never provided, returning incorrect ashes, fraudulent funeral plan trading and the theft of charitable donations among the offences. She said families had faced “appalling violations of trust” at their most vulnerable time.
Councillor Mike Ross, leader of Hull City Council, said the council would keep supporting victims “beyond today’s sentencing,” and argued the case showed the funeral sector needed formal regulation: “It is absolutely clear that there needs to be regulation of the funeral sector, something so many are now calling for, to ensure that the dreadful acts that occurred in this case can never happen again.”
Councillor Anne Handley, leader of East Riding of Yorkshire Council, said her authority’s ‘Butterfly Grove’ memorial garden at Lelley Fields Crematorium was intended as somewhere those affected could remember their loved ones, and backed the call for national regulation of the industry.
Assistant Chief Constable Andy Walker, of Humberside Police, called it one of the force’s largest and most complex investigations, adding that officers had been “determined to make sure that we kept them at the heart of everything we have done, every step of the way,” referring to the families affected. Jonathan Evison, police and crime commissioner for Humberside, sent his “heartfelt condolences to all those affected by this terrible situation,” and said support services, including Victim Support, would remain available now sentencing had concluded.
How the investigation began
Officers first received a report in March 2024 raising concern for the care of the deceased inside the Hessle Road funeral home. Bush was arrested on suspicion of preventing lawful and decent burials, fraud by false representation and fraud by abuse of position when he landed at Heathrow Airport, returning from America a few days after that report was made.
At Hull Crown Court in October 2025, Bush admitted 36 offences but denied the remaining 31. A trial date was set, but at a further hearing in April 2026 he changed his pleas on those charges to guilty as well, meaning all 67 offences were ultimately admitted rather than tested at trial.
The 67 charges
The offences Bush was sentenced for span more than a decade in places, and break down as:
- 30 counts of preventing a lawful and decent burial, relating to the recovery of the deceased from the Hessle Road premises between April 2023 and March 2024
- 30 counts of fraud by false representation, relating to families who were told cremations had taken place and given ashes, between April 2023 and March 2024
- Four counts of fraud by false representation relating to ashes given to families following pregnancy loss — including one case where the remains of an unborn baby were recovered from the premises — between August 2017 and March 2024
- One count of fraud by false representation relating to families either given ashes that were later found to still be at the premises, or who received no ashes at all, between August 2017 and March 2024
- One count of theft from charities, between 1 September 2017 and 6 March 2023
- One count of fraudulent trading in relation to funeral plans, between 23 May 2012 and 6 March 2024
What officers found inside
When investigators entered the premises, they found the loved ones of 35 families still there, most held far longer than necessary. Some families had been told a cremation had taken place when it had not; some had been given ashes despite no cremation happening at all.
Forensic teams recovered large quantities of human ashes and tried to identify them through DNA testing, but the high temperatures involved in cremation had destroyed the DNA too completely for any of it to be recovered. Some families were identified whose loved ones’ ashes were never received — and have never been found. Detectives also found that Bush had run fraudulent funeral plans and had failed to pass on charitable donations families had asked to be made in memory of the people they’d lost.
Support, and what happens next
Julie Butcher, area manager for Victim Support Humberside, said the organisation had supported people affected since the investigation began and would continue to do so, offering “free, independent and specialist support for anyone who has been affected in any way.” Anyone affected can reach Victim Support at www.affectedbycrime.com or by calling 0808 28 111 36.
Separately, proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act, led by the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Organised Crime Unit, are due to begin on Monday 16 November 2026.
