It’s a busy time in funeralworld.
Last week, the Competition and Markets Authority uploaded a whole suite of working papers and other documents (21 in total) to the website providing information about their ongoing Market Investigation into funerals, seeking comment on their findings so far by 27thFebruary.
On the same day, with impeccable timing, the Funeral Service Consumer Standards Review* published the first of their own consultation papers and requested feedback within a similar timeframe to the CMA, with a deadline of midnight on March 1st.
This is a surprising coincidence, given that the original FSCSR indicative timetable last July indicated that their documents would have been drafted, approved and signed off by October / November last year, with recommendations made to government bodies, industry bodies and policy makers at the same time. All out there in the public domain, months before the CMA published their working papers.
Instead, the timetable for publication of the FSCSR draft documents has slipped by several months, resulting in a confusing juxtaposition of two sets of publications on standards in the funeral industry, both seeking comment from any interested parties within the next four weeks.
Here at the GFG we have limited time to read and digest reams of information, and we presume that busy funeral directors and others with interest in the subject will feel the same. There is a huge amount of essential reading in the 20+ CMA working papers and providing considered comment will take significant commitment on our part. Without question, our priority for all of our free reading time is the once-in-a-generation opportunity offered by the CMA investigation into funerals.
The CMA has the authority to recommend remedies to issues they may identify, and have already set out a range of possible remedies that may be effective in addressing possible competition issues they may find in the provision of funeral director services at the point of need:
(a) The introduction of a quality regulation regime;(b) measures to promote greater information transparency;
(c) price controls; and
(d) local authority procurement of funeral director services.
One can almost hear the collective sharp intake of breath as the implications of these potential remedies sink in across funeralworld.
If you’re someone interested in the potential changes that are on the horizon, then we urge you to find the time to read through the CMA papers, and send your thoughts by e-mail to funerals@cma.gov.uk
As for the FSCSR consultation? Well, if you’d like to help the trade associations get their house in order, then they’d very much like to hear your thoughts. We will be focusing on responding to the CMA and don’t have capacity to give comprehensive feedback to the FSCSR as well.
Although we may have a couple of observations.
