A WOMAN has been paid more than £1,000 compensation by funeral directors who botched her father's burial.

Kelly Spellman won the payout from Leech's funeral service after a two-and-half-year battle following the funeral of her father, Paul Spellman, who died aged 45, in December 2005.

Miss Spellman, an only child, contacted the firm's Blackley branch to organise the funeral and was hit by a catalogue of errors, including waiting two days before finding Leech's had moved her father's body from hospital to their premises.

She says she had to wait three weeks for his funeral after Leech's missed the slot she wanted. On the day itself, the firm's driver left the family home without her uncle, forcing him to get a taxi. They then had do laps of Blackley Cemetery after arriving too early for the burial.

The mum-of-two kept quiet about the blunders until the firm summonsed her to chase a debt they mistakenly claimed she owed.

They then agreed the £1,100 settlement, plus a £75 donation to her family church, St Margaret Mary's, in Moston. She contacted the M.E.N. after reading about another family locked in a row with Leech's following errors surrounding the funeral of Patrick McCabe, 69, of Fallowfield, who died in July.

Leech's have offered to waive £1,200 of the bill after wrongly dating the plaque on his coffin and damaging a £250 floral display. Leech's insist such incidents are `isolated'.

Miss Spellman, from Blackley, said: "I said nothing at the time because I was grieving but when they contacted me demanding money I didn't owe, I just got annoyed."

A Leech's spokesman said the matter `has been resolved' to Miss Spellman's satisfaction, adding: "While we recognise Mr Spellman's funeral did not meet our usual high standards, we would stress such incidents are isolated."