From Broadcast here: 

Labour MPs have tabled an early day motion following True North’s Dispatches: Undercover Undertaker on Co-operative Funeralcare that aired earlier this week on Channel 4.

The motion stated MPs were “shocked and disgusted” by the Channel 4 doc which showed the funeral care provider stored coffins containing bodies in warehouses on industrial estates.

Sponsored by Labour MP Roger Godsiff and backed by fellow party members Ronnie Campbell and Virendra Sharma, it went on to call for the resignation of those staff responsible.

“This House… believes that a mutual organisation can, and should, have higher ethical standards than a purely profit-orientated company,” the motion said.

Co-operative Funeralcare managing director George Tinning said the footage aired was not “typical” of its business.

“We operate specialised facilities in each area servicing various branches in that area and in those facilities we have mortuaries, coffin storage, garaging and the like.

“Most of them are associated with funeral homes, very few of them are on high streets because it would be totally inappropriate to have mortuaries in every high street,” he said.

“You can rest assured that although this is a side of our business that the public don’t see, that they are amongst the finest in the profession and facilities that we are very proud of.”

Dear Mr Tinning

I am writing in the aftermath of Undercover Undertaker to proffer an olive branch. The Good Funeral Guide has attempted to talk to Funeralcare in the past and met with no reply. In the best interests of the bereaved, the cause we both have in common, I want you now to consider opening a channel of communication.

For Funeralcare, the transmission of Undercover Undertaker may, as you know, prove to be a ground zero event. It has shattered trust and confidence in a well-loved institution. It must have taken great courage for your staff come to work yesterday. Goodness knows what some of them endured. We felt for them.

Here at the Good Funeral Guide we subscribe to the ideals and goals of co-operation. Indeed, we recently launched an initiative to encourage communities to establish their own funeral co-operatives: www.CommunityFunerals.org.uk. We also recommend Scotmid, an excellent co-operative funeral service in Edinburgh.

We believe the co-operative model has great potential to be pre-eminent in the funeral market. It is because we believe in the co-operative model so strongly that we have been so unfriendly towards Funeralcare. We think that your organisation lost sight of its original purpose and its foundational values. On a commercial level, we have been dismayed that, though the Funeralcare operation enjoys impressive economies of scale, the fruits of these have never been passed on to consumers – which is the whole point of them. We deplore the culture of pressure selling, just one of the factors which has contributed to the ethical ill health of Funeralcare. We knew that it was only a matter of time before Funeralcare would be found out.

As to the concept of the hub, we make no objection in principle so long as it is appointed and staffed in a way which meets the needs, wishes and expectations of clients. There are other consolidated businesses that run perfectly respectable hubs.

Looking to the future, a cleaned up version of the status quo obviously won’t do. Only a return to core values can restore the good name of Funeralcare and, at the same time, bring out the best in your staff, many of whom, as you are well aware, are superb. The upside of catastrophe is that it breeds opportunity.

We don’t expect you to re-vision Funeralcare on our terms, of course, and we don’t ask you to. We ask just two things. First, we ask you to return to the spirit of the Rochdale Principles. Second, we ask you to consider what Terry Leahy has to say in his excellent new book ‘Management in 10 Words’. He talks about the importance of ‘great and noble objectives’. One of his objectives at Tesco was “to create value for customers to earn their lifetime loyalty”. If you translate this idea to the funeral industry you get: “to create funeral experiences for customers to earn their lifelong gratitude”.

I would like to finish by making you an offer. A great many people visit this website, this blog in particular. Doubtless you will, in the coming weeks and months, wish to get messages out to consumers which will restore their faith in Funeralcare. We should be very happy to publicise these for you.

With all best wishes,

Charles

Readers interested to discover what Terry Leahy’s 10 words are can find them here. 

Channel 4’s Dispatches film Undercover Undertaker (Monday 25 June) has shocked viewers with its undercover revelations at Co-operative Funeralcare, the obvious and most deserving target of such treatment*. 

The production line nature of the ‘hub’ depicted in the programme is the corollary of consolidation and rationalisation in the funeral industry. Its acceptability to consumers has never been tested by market research, but it is a standard feature of consolidated businesses in the industry.  Many Funeralcare customers who now realise their loved one was taken to a hub will be devastated. Bereaved people can in future make sure this does not happen to them. There are plenty of boutique funeral directors who can meet their needs and wishes. 

What the film failed to offer viewers was a balanced survey of the industry as a whole. As a consequence, the good name of all funeral homes stands in jeopardy. This is unfair. Standards of practice in the funeral industry generally mirror those in any other industry. Co-operative Funeralcare offers a typical example of egregious corporate cynicism where the pursuit of profit has betrayed the trust of consumers and the hard work and decency of many of its employees. The majority of funeral homes in the UK are independent businesses ranging from the indifferent to the excellent and which care for their dead on their premises. Wickedness is rare, scandals few. The very best abide by standards which are as startlingly high as Funeralcare’s are low. 

In the UK it is illegal to operate an unlicensed cattery, so it is no surprise that there have been renewed calls for regulation. The codes of conduct and compliance regimes of the two industry bodies, the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD)  and the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF), have, justly, been called into question. Co-operative Funeralcare is a member of the NAFD, a body which supports self-regulation. 

However, if the experience of children in care and the elderly in nursing homes is anything to go by, funeral consumers are mistaken if they suppose that licensing funeral directors and subjecting their funeral homes to an independent inspection regime will be a silver bullet. In the USA the professionalisation of funeral directors has driven up prices, while the inspection regime of the Federal Trade Commission has failed to root out malpractice. 

The best hope for funeral shoppers remains vigorous consumer scrutiny. We only buy an average of two funerals in a lifetime, so it’s no surprise we’re not very good at it. Worse, it’s a distress purchase – one we make when our mind is overcast by grief. But even at such a time it is possible to make an informed choice, and there is every incentive to do so. First, we owe it to the person who has died. Second, the experience of a good funeral can be transformative of grief. Third, everyone in Britain can find, within ten miles of their home, a decent, dedicated caring funeral director who will look after them well.

*Co-operative Funeralcare lays claim to ethical standards that set it apart from its commercial rivals, but it conducts itself like any corporate predator. Founded by the people for the people, Funeralcare is in dispute with the GMB union, which it has de-recognised, setting it in clear breach of its founding principles. Created in order to enable working people to buy what they would not otherwise be able to afford, Co-operative Funeralcare enjoys economies of scale which enable it to sell funerals at lower cost than its independent competitors. Funeralcare does not pass these benefits on to funeral shoppers but, instead, charges, on average, several hundred pounds more than most independent businesses [source: http://bit.ly/nCZGJT], rendering it commercially incoherent.

For all those who watched Undercover Undertaker and despaired, the Good Funeral Guide offers the following simple five-point guide to finding a good funeral director.

5 Things to know before you arrange a Funeral

If you saw the recent Dispatches programme on Channel 4 and are concerned about making the right choices when organising a funeral, we hope this information will empower you.

1. Take your time

Unless you have religious reasons for doing otherwise, take your time. If someone dies at home by all means call a funeral director and ask them to collect the body but know that you can have them transferred to another funeral director for a nominal charge before any paperwork is signed and this also applies if the person has already been collected because they died in a nursing home. If the person died in a hospital there may be no rush – they can stay in the mortuary until you’ve chosen a funeral director you’re happy with. If the hospital does not have a mortuary, a nominated funeral director will look after them until you arrange for a transfer. By all means call family and friends to tell them that death has occurred, but don’t feel that you need to tell them the place and time of the funeral in the same call. Unless the coroner is involved you must register the death within 5 days.

2. Ask a friend to help

The chances are you’ve never organised a funeral before. There’s lots to learn, just at a time when you may feel least able to cope, so enlist the help of a friend. Try to choose someone who is level-headed, organised, not afraid to ask questions of you, and the funeral director, and in whom you can confide about any financial constraints.

3. Know your options

The main choices are between burial and cremation – unless your religion prescribes one or the other. Cremation is almost always cheaper. You could can costs to a minimum by having no ceremony and opting for direct cremation, holding a funeral/memorial and/or ash scattering event a few days, weeks or months later at a place and time that’s right for you and the person who died.

4. Know and stick to your budget

Your budget should determine what sort of funeral you choose, not the other way around. Because we want to ‘do them proud’ it’s very easy to overspend. Remember that, ultimately, a good send-off is determined by what you say and do, not what you spend. Ask your friend to help you stick to your budget and think about how people can play their part in the preparations and ceremony. Remember that many funeral directors will ask for all of the 3rd-party fees up front (this could be up to £1000 for cremation in some parts of the country, even more for burial), with the balance to be paid soon after the funeral, so you will need to have the funds available. It’s perfectly OK to ask friends and family to help with the cost, and much more practical than buying flowers which will usually only be seen briefly. Finally, be sure to claim any benefit you might be entitled to.

5. Shop around

The cost of funerals varies hugely. Call and ask for quotes from all your local funeral directors. Evaluate how your request is dealt with and give each one stars out of five. Don’t worry about qualifications. Rather, go and interview three funeral directors and take your friend with you for support and to keep you on track. Consider asking to go behind the scenes so that you can see where the person who has died will stay. Finally, balance cost against quality of service and go with the nicest funeral director you can afford.

Note: this advice applies to those who wish to employ a funeral director. There is no law saying you have to. If you think you would like to care for your own at home, please click the link here. 

We’ve got to be careful because we don’t want to be sued and the email we have just received says that “If you are not the intended recipient, any form of reproduction, dissemination, copying, disclosure, modification, distribution and/or publication or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance upon this message or its attachments is prohibited and may be unlawful.” It’s probably nonsense, but we know they’re out to get us. 

SAIF has emailed all of its members telling them not to talk to the press and advising them that ‘PR Spokesperson John Weir is working closingly with SAIF National President Arran Brudenell and Executives to ensure that SAIF have a uniformed [sic] stance and response on this matter.’

The NAFD has also emailed its members  advising them to ‘make no comment and refer the enquiry to National Office so we can then redirect the journalist to a member of our public relations team.’

And so it goes on. A thermo-nuclear half hour?