After failing to buy him a coffin, two funeral directors left a pensioner’s decomposing body in an unrefrigerated mortuary for more than a month, a court has heard.

Richard Elkin, 49, and Hayley Bell, 42, who ran Elkin and Bell Funerals in Gosport, Hampshire are on trial in Portsmouth Crown Court accused of preventing the lawful burial of a dead body and fraud.

The bodies of two elderly men were found by High Court enforcement officers who had been tasked with repossessing the premises due to unpaid rent and debts, prosecutor Lesley Bates KC told the jury.

Ms Bates said: ‘They felt immediate concern at the circumstances in which the bodies were being kept.

‘Water was coming in through a leak in the roof of the mortuary room, it was running down the walls.

‘The room was not refrigerate

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