A fraudulent funeral director who spent more than £42,000 on holidays to Center Parcs and Arizona while he was defrauding scores of customers has been jailed for 20 years.

Robert Bush breached the trust of his customers at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors “on an almost industrial scale” and “in a myriad of ways”, from mixing up ashes to fleecing vulnerable pensioners with fake funeral plans.

On Friday, he was told by a judge that the 20-year prison term could not “put right the harm the defendant has done”.

Earlier this week, the court heard how he breached the trust placed in him by 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 of the arrangements, and stealing charity donations collected at services.

Bush offered an apology “without qualification” to the families left devastated by his mistreatment of their deceased loved ones, a court heard.

Bush’s lawyers told a judge “he has expressed himself to the court, and through the court to the families, as being sorry”.

Richard Wright KC, defending, addressed the court after prosecutors said Bush should face between 20 and 25 years in prison for multiple charges of preventing lawful burials, fraud and theft.

Mr Wright said: “Nothing I can say is intended to dull their (the families) pain, anger or the sense of betrayal.”

He told the court: “Over the course of the last two-and-a-half days the court, and through the unprecedented global media coverage, the world, has listened quietly as victim after victim after victim of Robert Bush has either come forward to read their own victim personal statements or has had their statements read on their behalf.

“He has heard witness after witness castigate his character and heard their entirely understandable anger, pain and outrage, all directed at him. And, all rightly directed at him.”

The barrister said his client’s offending has caused pain, anguish and upset “on a scale that it’s difficult to comprehend”.

Mr Wright said Bush has written to the court to apologise and “he offers that apology without qualification and he accepts that responsibility.”

On the third day of his sentencing on Wednesday, the court was told about some of Bush’s personal spending.

This included spending £9,000 on camping and almost £7,000 on motorcycle racing in the year he told a grieving mother her unborn baby had been cremated, while leaving it on the floor of his funeral home in a paper bag.

Financial records submitted to the court showed that between 2017 and 2024, when he was arrested, Bush spent more than £42,000 on holidays, £21,000 on motorcycle racing and £17,400 on home improvements.

Throughout that time, the court has heard, he was defrauding customers by taking money for funeral plans he was not authorised to set up, and giving families the wrong ashes for their loved ones.

The judge, Mr Justice Hilliard, asked for a detailed breakdown of Bush’s spending, saying: “I think people who have lost their money will want to know what it went on.”

Prosecutors said his holiday spending over the seven years included £6,400 on three trips to Center Parcs, £3,800 on a trip to Italy, and £3,000 on the holiday he was taking with his daughter in Arizona when the horrors at the funeral home were discovered.

Records showed that in 2022, the year he failed to cremate Jasmine Beverley’s baby Sunny Beverley-Conlin, he spent more than £9,000 on camping expenses.

Prosecutors also highlighted almost £10,000 of retail spending, including £1,000 in Boodles jewellers, and £3,385 on restaurants, including £250 for a meal at fashionable Covent Garden restaurant Clos Maggiore.

Prosecutor Steven Ball said that between March 17 2017 and April 8 2024, almost £1.49 million was transferred into Bush’s personal bank account from Legacy business accounts.

Mr Ball said that in that time the total received in Legacy and Bush’s accounts was more than £3 million, but the turnover reported to Companies House and HM Revenue and Customs did not reflect this.

Earlier in the day the court heard that Bush stole money from 12 charities by not passing on donations collected at his funeral services, including the Salvation Army, Macmillan Cancer Support, Help for Heroes, the RNLI and some local groups.

Mary Jane Roberts collected between £300 and £600 for Macmillan at the funeral of her mother Lynne Wheal, who died from cancer in 2022.

The court heard that Bush told her: “We’ll take care of it, don’t worry.”

Ms Roberts remembered thinking “how nice he was for giving them one less thing to worry about”, but Macmillan never received the donation.

When police raided Legacy, they found an empty envelope labelled “Donations in memory of Matthew Craig. Thank you”.

The court heard that Mr Craig died in September 2023, and the envelope should have contained donations for Dove House Hospice, collected by his mother Jayne Waudby.

A judge has heard heard that Bush kept 31 bodies, including an unborn baby in a paper bag, at his Hull funeral home while telling their families they had been cremated and giving them the ashes of a stranger.

He also sold false funeral plans worth more than £500,000 in total, covering more than 200 people, prosecutors have said.

In emotional scenes over two days earlier this week, more than 80 people either faced Bush to tell the stories of how he devastated their lives, or had their statements read in court by prosecutors.

Many broke down in tears as they described Bush’s “callous” disregard for relatives they had entrusted to him.

Bush sat in the glass-fronted dock, wearing a dark suit as he listened to the prosecution case against him continue on Wednesday morning.

Police were called to Legacy’s Hessle Road premises in March 2024 after concerns were raised, and officers found 35 bodies and more than 100 sets of ashes.

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.