TWO funeral parlour managers who hid the body of a baby in an elderly woman's coffin will attempt to have their sentences cut in July.

Mark Eshelby, 48, of Londonderry, Northallerton, North Yorkshire and Graeme Skidmore, now 45, of Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland, former colleagues at Co-operative Funeral Services, in York, were each handed 18-month suspended sentences and fined £5,000 in June last year, after they admitted conspiring to prevent a proper burial.

They buried the empty coffin of baby Benjamin Judson, and then cremated his body alongside that of 85-year-old Evelyn Sayner, in a bid to cover up the error.

Earlier this year, lawyers argued at the Appeal Court in London that the sentences were too harsh, and the pair were granted permission to appeal.

The case was adjourned and is now due to be heard on Wednesday, July 2.

Baby Benjamin lived for just 20 minutes after he was born at York Hospital in December 1998. Mrs Sayner died in the hospital days later.

Eshelby and Skidmore panicked when they realised they had sent off Benjamin's funeral procession without putting his body in the coffin.

They then hid his remains in the same coffin as Mrs Sayner. For more than nine years, Benjamin's parents unknowingly visited an empty grave.

The scandal came to light in February 2006, when City of York Council launched an investigation into allegations of malpractice at York Crematorium.