A MAN in charge of a crematorium at the centre of the baby ash scandal investigation has been sacked.
Derek Snow was suspended from his post at Aberdeen Crematorium after council officials launched a new probe in June. An allegation had surfaced about the remains of adults and infants being cremated together at the Hazlehead site.
The scandal was sparked last year by the discovery that staff at Mortonhall Crematorium in Edinburgh had secretly buried infants' ashes. The discovery of the mass grave in the capital gave rise to a public outcry and several councils across Scotland launched their own investigations into cremation practices.
However, an internal inquiry carried out by Aberdeen City Council found no evidence of wrongdoing, despite failing to return the remains of 24 babies to parents.
Mr Snow was recently suspended from his role after the local authority decided to launch a new probe into working practices at the city crematorium. And yesterday it emerged that he was no longer employed by the city council and his job is now being advertised.
Senior councillors have been sent an e-mail informing them that Mr Snow had been removed from his post, but the local authority refused to confirm his departure, stating that it did not comment on staffing matters.
The crematorium management vacancy was published online on Monday.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article