Baby ashes scandal: Heartache became a driving force for campaign

Mr Perkins, 53, has tirelessly campaigned to find out the truth about cremations at Emstrey Crematorium after his own heartbreaking experience.

Mr Perkins lost his four-month-old daughter Olivia to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in 2007 – and was told he would have no ashes after her cremation.

He said that it is vital for the grieving process that parents do receive the remains of babies and infants to allow them to cope with the loss.

He said: "Unless you have lost a baby you do not know what it is like.

"The pain is not like losing a parent, or an aunt or an uncle. A baby is not supposed to die, you expect your children to outlive you by many years."

Mr Perkins, from Monkmoor, said he had felt let down by the authorities and being told there would be no remains from his daughter's cremation was like a second bereavement.

He said: "You trust the council, the funeral directors, the crematorium, you trust them to do the decent thing and give your child a decent send off.

"Then you find out the day before a funeral there there will be no remains after – that is like losing that child for a second time.

"That grief, it is something that affects you your whole life.

"If I am feeling this way, I know there are hundreds and thousands more parents feeling that way, struggling to live day by day, knowing there would have been something left from their child's funeral and they have not been given it back."

Rebecca Adams lost her son Harry at only four days old and like many parents was told there would be no ashes to return following his funeral.

Neither Rebecca, 38, nor her husband David, 43, from Shrewsbury, questioned the funeral directors on it. Like many they just accepted the word of those they saw as professionals.

Harry died on December 14, 2009, but for Rebecca the nightmare of her grief was reignited when she met Action for Ashes founder Glen Perkins who told her about the ongoing inquiry.

Rebecca said she was not sure she wanted to get involved in the campaign, for fear of having to relive her loss. She said: "It was in February that I found out when I met Glen. I read the papers but I guess I just hadn't seen it or hadn't noticed it.

"I was so angry. It is like you were told by the funeral home what the situation was and you are meant to believe professionals, that what they say is true and then you find out it is not, and it is devastating.

"I was very, very angry and upset, and then it is like 'what have you done with my baby?'.

"I had also come to terms with it. Harry was in heaven and he was safe and that is what was getting me through it. It just brought it all back again and I didn't know if I wanted to come on board and have to face all that again."

Rebecca said that not being given her son's ashes was something she will never be able to come to terms with.

She said: "It is like someone has taken something from me that does not belong to them. It is not like a pair of shoes that break and you can get some more, this was a life and a body and I will never have that."

Yesterday Shropshire Council apologised to the parents involved and following an inquiry, inspector David Jenkins called for a nationwide overhaul of regulations governing baby cremations.