National Committee on Infant Cremation: 2017 annual report

3. Progress Against Bonomy And Angiolini Recommendations

As of October 2016, the Committee, its Sub-Groups and its member organisations fully completed 27 of the 64 recommendations made by Lord Bonomy which equates to a 42% completion rate.

A further 26 recommendations will be completed by the coming into force of various sections of the Burial and Cremation (Scotland) Act 2016 (“the 2016 Act”) which was passed by Scottish Parliament in March 2016. Each section of the 2016 Act must now be brought in to force separately following parliamentary processes. Once the relevant sections of the 2016 Act have been commenced and regulations have been agreed by Scottish Parliament 53 of the 64 recommendations, or 80% will be complete .

Of the remaining 11 recommendations made by Lord Bonomy, 4 are subject to completion by NHS Education for Scotland and were planned for completion in April 2017, 4 are annually recurring and therefore not subject to a ‘final completion’ as such; 1 may not be directly possible by legislation and is included within the Code of Practice instead and; 2 can only be commenced after other legislation and documentation is in place.

Of the 15 recommendations made by Dame Elish, 2 are general conclusions, 7 will be completed when the regulations of the 2016 Act come in to force, including 4 which relate directly to inspection; 3 are for NHS Education for Scotland and 3 are local authority/ NHS/Private Crematorium matters relating to training and sharing of good practice.

A worksheet detailing the outstanding recommendations to be implemented can be found in the separate Committee Action Plan document on the National Committee webpage: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Health/Policy/BurialsCremation/NationalCommitteeonBurialandCremation