A REPORT into the baby ashes scandal at an Aberdeen crematorium has revealed a claim staff misled the senior judge who was investigating procedures there.
The report released by Aberdeen City Council was commissioned after it emerged that babies were being cremated with unrelated adults.
The report was one of many into what happened at the council-run crematorium where babies and adults were often cremated together, with ashes returned to the relatives of adults.
The parents of babies were told no ashes were recovered.
The council said Aberdeen's Hazlehead crematorium operations have been changed and "there is now an open and inclusive ethos where staff are encouraged to contribute and challenge".
A countrywide investigation began after bereaved families found out staff at Mortonhall Crematorium in Edinburgh had secretly buried the ashes of babies for decades without their parents' knowledge.
The initial view regarding the Aberdeen crematorium was that there were "no implications as the focus of media attention had been about what had been done with recovered ashes, and that the conventional wisdom was that no ashes were recovered at Hazlehead because of the high temperatures and performance of the new cremators".
The report, by independent investigator Richard Penn, claims former senior judge Lord Bonomy was misled by those Aberdeen City Council staff he met when he and his team visited the crematorium as part of his inquiry.
An anonymous letter by a former member of staff sent to the council in May 2014 said staff were "trained in a procedure that we thought to be correct", and said there were never any remains recovered from children who were less than two years old.
The letter read: "They were never cremated on their own, they always went into the cremator with an adult.
"I am appalled that I myself have been part of this and think the responsibility lies with Aberdeen City Council for allowing this to happen."
The report stated it was "clear that Lord Bonomy had been misled by those Aberdeen City Council staff who met with him and his team during the Infant Cremation Commission's visit to Aberdeen Crematorium".
The report also found there was "no evidence that any effort had been made by any of the senior managers concerned at Aberdeen City Council to clarify at exactly what age or stage ashes are available".
It said senior managers did not challenge what they were told by the crematorium manager despite the information and evidence that emerged from the Mortonhall Crematorium initial investigation.
The council was ordered by the Scottish Information Commissioner to release the report after a request from BBC Scotland.
A senior manager who carried out a later review said: "I am satisfied that there was malpractice in terms of they were putting more than one coffin in at the same time as well."
An Aberdeen City Council spokesperson said: “Over the past few years operations at the crematorium have been transformed and there is now an open and inclusive ethos where staff are encouraged to contribute and challenge.
“Every crematorium staff member is a qualified cremator technician certified to carry out infant and baby cremations.
"At the inspection of Hazlehead Crematorium in 2016, the Inspector of Crematoria Scotland noted the Crematorium Operational Procedure document as a credit to the authors and one of the most comprehensive and useful guidance and training aids seen by the Inspector at any of the other 28 crematoria in Scotland.
“Those improvements do not in any way compensate for the pain suffered by those affected by past practices but are an indication of the comprehensive measures taken to address the issues identified.”
The council also said that the Commissioner said it had correctly withheld some of the information contained within the report but determined that other sections should be released and redacted sections primarily relate to personal data which is not otherwise publicly available.
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