Council announces baby ashes scandal compensation claims deadline
Families affected by the baby ashes scandal in Aberdeen have seven more weeks to lodge compensation claims.
The city council has announced it will accept claims up to February 1 next year.
The local authority, which has apologised for past practices at Aberdeen Hazlehead Crematorium, said it is committed to moving towards a settlement of those claims.
A national investigation by former lord advocate Dame Elish Angiolini, published in June, found infants had been cremated along with unrelated adults over many years in unethical and abhorrent practices'' at Hazlehead.
Many staff had the ''extraordinary belief'' there would be no recovered ashes from babies up to the age of 18 months despite the fact they were recovered in other crematoriums.
Council chief Angela Scott acknowledged in a later report the affair had a profound effect'' on public trust and confidence in the crematorium and local authority.
Announcing the claims deadline, a spokesman for Aberdeen City Council said: The council has wholeheartedly apologised for the distress past practices at Aberdeen Crematorium have caused.
The commitment to the compensation process is part of a full and comprehensive response from the organisation but Aberdeen City Council is clear that the impact on those affected must never be forgotten.''
The council has been liaising with Thompsons Solicitors, the firm representing many of the families involved.
Partner Patrick McGuire said the past few years have been immensely painful and stressful for the families.
He said: They have struggled to get their concerns heard. They felt as if their concerns were being ignored and brushed aside.
The fact that we are where we are today is a testament to their courage, tenacity and dignity as well as the knowledge that in the end they knew they would be proved right.
Over the past few years myself and the Aberdeen parents have had no alternative other than to follow a course of being highly critical of the stance adopted by Aberdeen City Council.
The council has now done the right thing and for that they should be given credit.''
The terms of any compensation packages will be confidential.
:: Claims should be addressed to Head of Legal Democratic Services, Aberdeen City Council, Corporate Governance, Business Hub 6, Level One South, Marischal College, Broad Street, Aberdeen, AB10 1AB, or Thompsons Solicitors, 285 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4HQ.