Parents meet minister over Leeds baby funeral director ‘horror’

Families whose babies’ bodies were kept at a funeral director’s home will call for tighter regulation of the funeral industry when they meet a government minister later.

Zoe Ward told a BBC investigation in August that she was left “screaming” after discovering her dead son had been put in a baby bouncer “watching cartoons” in the living room of Amie Upton – the founder of Florrie’s Army.

Ms Upton has previously told the BBC she had only ever received two complaints in her eight years of running her baby loss support and funeral service in Leeds.

Ms Ward, who will be meeting Victims Minister Alex Davies-Jones with another affected family, said she hoped their “voices are heard”.

Ms Ward asked Florries Army to arrange the funeral for her baby, Bleu, just shortly after he died of brain damage at three weeks old in 2021.

She said she thought he would be in a “professional setting,” but was left “terrified” when she saw her son in Ms Upton’s living room.

“I didn’t want him in that house,” Ms Ward said, adding the “weird” experience had left her “upset and angry”.

Her experience has led to her now wanting to see tighter rules for the funeral industry, which is unregulated in England and Wales.

There are currently no legal requirements about how and where bodies should be stored, and no qualifications are needed to set up as a funeral director.

A statutory code of conduct for funeral directors was introduced in Scotland in March.

The government has said they will update on plans to regulate the funeral sector “before the end of the year”, following an inquiry in July which recommended it should introduce statutory regulations in England.

“Why shouldn’t there be a law?” Ms Ward said.

“Why shouldn’t the deceased have dignity and be looked after, and be loved?

“I couldn’t imagine somebody playing with Bleu like she did. That hurts. I do not want anybody else to go through that.”

A BBC Investigation in August reported Ms Upton had been banned from entering any of Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust’s mortuaries and maternity wards for keeping the bodies of babies at her home.

Meanwhile, West Yorkshire Police said it had investigated Florrie’s Army, but after “extensive enquiries” had not identified any potential crimes.

Many reviews of Ms Upton’s services on Facebook are positive, with some families describing the service as “amazing” and “inspirational”.

Cody and Liam Townend are also meeting the Victims Minister along with Ms Ward.

Their daughter was stillborn in January, with the pair appointing Ms Upton to oversee her funeral.

Speaking to the BBC, the couple said they found Macie-Mae’s body on the sofa at the funeral director’s home, six miles away from the funeral parlour where they thought her body was being looked after.

“It was just crazy. If I told somebody of this story… they’d think it was a horror film,” Cody’s mother Dawn Shackleton said.

Mrs Townend wants to see tighter regulations.

“No family should ever have to go through what we’ve had to”, she said.

“A family should be able to trust funeral directors.”

The government said grieving families “rightly expected their children to be treated with dignity and respect” and that it was “considering the full range of options to improve standards” in the funeral industry.