Gosport MP calls for statutory regulation of funeral directors and cremation services
It's after two funeral directors were sentenced yesterday after leading a grieving family to believe their loved one had been cremated
Last updated 23rd Feb 2026
The Gosport MP is taking families' calls for statutory regulation of funeral directors and cremation services to Parliament.
It's after two funeral directors were sentenced to four years yesterday after leading a grieving family to believe their loved one had been cremated.
Dame Caroline Dinenage, MP for Gosport, said she wants to see:
- Licencing scheme - based upon a mandatory code of conduct.
- Inspection regime - to ensure premises are not breaching their licence.
- Minimum qualifications or standards to become funeral practitioners.
- Extension of the Human Tissue Act to cover bodies in the hands of funeral directors or direct cremation services.
Ms Dinenage said: "These funeral directors come into our lives at the most distressing and traumatic time when we've just lost someone that we love deeply.
"You'd like to think, you would hope, and you should be able to expect that these people will treat your loved one with the care, the respect, and the dignity that they deserve.
"It's horrific when this doesn't happen.
"It's even more horrific that there isn't a legislative framework and regulatory framework in place to ensure that if it does, that it can sweep in when things go wrong.
"In order to prosecute this case, they've had to use a really old piece of common law, which dates back to the time of grave robbers.
"So there needs to be protections in place for people so that their loved one will get the protections that they deserve."
Ms Dinenage said she's met with successive ministers and is going to be having a debate in Parliament in future.
Richard Elkin, 49, and Hayley Bell, 42, of Elkin and Bell Funerals, were sentenced at Portsmouth Crown Court yesterday to four years.
The pair have been convicted and found guilty of a number of offences, in one of the first prosecutions of its kind in the UK.
When police visited the premises in Nobes Avenue, Gosport in December 2023 they found the bodies of two elderly man, in an unrefrigerated, leaking room with broken windows.
One of the bodies had been there for 36 days, despite the family being told a cremation had taken place.
Richard Elkin was found guilty of:
- Intentionally or recklessly causing a public nuisance between 27 June 2022 and 11 December 2023.
- Preventing the lawful and decent burial of a dead body between 3 November 2023 and 11 December 2023.
- Carrying on a business with intent to defraud creditors/for other fraudulent purpose between 10 August 2022 and 11 December 2023.
- Making a false instrument with intent for it to be accepted as genuine.
- Using a false instrument with intent for it to be accepted as genuine.
Hayley Bell was found guilty of:
- Intentionally or recklessly causing a public nuisance between 27 June 2022 and 11 December 2023.
- Preventing the lawful and decent burial of a dead body between 3 November 2023 and 11 December 2023.
- Carrying on a business with intent to defraud creditors/for other fraudulent purpose between 10 August 2022 and 11 December 2023.