Author: Fran Hall

Making it personal

12 July 2024
Fran Hall
3 Comments
Categories: Corporate funeral directors, funeral directors, independent funeral directors

Here at the Good Funeral Guide ,we’re very proud of our unique accreditation programme. We look at each funeral business entirely from a consumer point of view. It’s thorough, it’s thoughtful and explores every aspect of what goes into, or what should go into, creating and running a funeral for the person who’s died, and the people around them. 

We only recommend companies that we would have no hesitation in choosing for ourselves, so that the general public can be safe in the knowledge that they are getting the very best of service from a funeral director who is able to respond to their needs and wishes. 

We don’t recommend companies that are run by large corporate interests with their set ‘we don’t think it’s broken so we won’t fix it’ model of working. Recently, one of our directors was reminded of the reason why. 

She found herself working with a branch of one such corporation. This business is seeking to raise its public profile, no doubt due to the fact that it made an estimated loss of £11m in 2023. It has launched an advertising campaign encouraging people to have conversations about what kind of funeral they’d like to have. 

In these adverts we see real people talking to each other about colourful attire, different kinds of hearses, brass bands, sunflowers and exploding one’s cremated remains into the sky.  The adverts advocate that talking about death should be a normal part of life and to make sure that your funeral is not the same as everyone else’s. 

They’ve also made a TV show about celebrities planning the funeral of a fellow, (still alive) celebrity, along the lines of ‘Don’t Tell the Bride’. In the episodes, we see the celebrity deep in conversation with a corporately dressed funeral arranger, where nothing is too much trouble. 

But in truth, this does not translate to the services on the ground. 

For a start, there is no longer a branch on every high street, as one bereaved family discovered when they found themselves ringing round to see which was their nearest branch that wasn’t either already closed down or closing, because the person at the other end in a call centre didn’t know. The family was trying to arrange for the body of their person to be collected. 

The same family then found that this company was unable to facilitate the coffin sitting on trestles next to them during the ceremony, rather than being far away on the catafalque.

Married for 65 years, his widow wanted to be by her husband’s side right until the end. It would have been easy to arrange, it just needed trestles provided and staff available to lift the coffin respectfully onto the catafalque at the end of the ceremony.

But the bearers weren’t able to stay for 30 minutes to make this happen. 

‘That’s not how it works’  the arranger told the celebrant. 

‘Can you arrange for the bearers to not have to rush off?’ 

‘That’s not how it works, and I have no authority to change that. I can ask my manager, but they’ll probably say no’. 

The solution? For it to either be business as usual or for the coffin to be on an electric wheeled bier during the ceremony and then mechanically hoisted onto the catafalque at the end for the moments of silence.

Funeral operatives may be used to this clinical looking piece of machinery, but the public are not. And let’s face, it they are pretty ugly. 

‘Can we put a cloth over it?’ 

‘That’s not how it works’. 

It could work, it could be made to work for the bereaved family, as a substitution for the apparently impossible ask of having the coffin placed on trestles, but even this small token effort of trying to make a difficult day a little easier for their client and her family was too much work for the company.

We know that individual branches may be run by kind, helpful, efficient people who go the extra mile. There are some lovely people working for corporate funeral directors. But even the smallest personal touches can’t be guaranteed, especially not with staff shortages and branch closures and plunging company profits. Corners have to be cut, targets met, time management prioritised. 

This is why we only ever recommend independent funeral directors. 

We believe they are far more able to respond to individual needs and wishes, to be flexible and creative and to work with each client to create a funeral that is right for them. Mostly small companies, who can be flexible even on the smallest of detail. And it’s often these small details that are the most important, and the ones that do actually make the funeral unique. 

The sort of funeral directors where nothing being too much trouble really is how it works. 

Saving your family all the stress?

4 June 2024
Fran Hall
2 Comments
Categories: Dignity, funeral plans, Safe Hands Funeral Plans

We have long held a wary opinion of pre-paid funeral plans here at the GFG. 

Over the years, we have published numerous blog posts warning people to be extremely careful and to do as much research as possible before committing to purchasing a funeral plan. 

It’s an absolutely huge market. A multi-billion-pound market. According to Mintel, pre-arranged funerals account for a quarter of the overall UK funeral market, with 1.64 million funeral plans currently in existence. Let’s be generous and suggest that the average price of those plans is £2,000* – multiply that up and we reach more than £3,000,000,000 of hard-earned money tied up in funeral plans.

(*The price of a pre-paid funeral plan starts at just over £3,000. According to the National Association of Funeral Plan Providers, 169,846 new plans were purchased last year.)

The situation has improved significantly from the Wild West that it used to be before July 2022, when the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) took on regulation of the funeral market. 

We wrote here about our relief when the FCA finally brought this multi-billion-pound market under scrutiny, giving the public the reassurance of knowing that planholders who have paid an authorised provider for a funeral plan will have the protection of access to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and / or the Financial Ombudsman Service.

However, since the advent of regulation, multiple funeral planning companies have gone bust as a direct result of failing to meet the required FCA standards, leaving hundreds of thousands of devastated people who thought they had done the right thing by taking out a funeral plan, but who suddenly found that they don’t have the cover they have paid for.

Currently, four former funeral plan providers are in liquidation (Not For Profit Funeral Plans, Ready4Retirement, Rest Assured and Unique Funeral Plans).

A further six firms are in administration (Empathy UK Prepaid Funeral Plans, One Life Funeral Planning Ltd, Pride Planning, Prosperous Life, Safe Hands Funeral Plans and Silver Clouds Later Life Planning). 

And alongside these failures, the Serious Fraud Office are conducting a criminal investigation into a suspected fraud at Safe Hands Funeral Plans.

Plan-holders at many of the companies refused authorisation have often found themselves between a rock and a hard place – the choice for these unsuspecting, innocent planholders was either ‘just wait in line for whatever money back will be left to give back to you when the company is finally wound up’, or ‘accept the offer of a discounted new funeral plan from a FCA authorised provider’. 

A glance through the various Administrators’ Progress Reports or Liquidators’ Statements of Receipts and Payments at Companies House is depressing reading, as the labyrinthine dealings of investments, intercompany loans and transfers, and offshoring of funds is revealed. Vast amounts of money are now being allocated against the costs of winding up these companies, with Administrators’ fees running into millions already. The money paid in good faith, often by people who can least afford to lose it – many, many millions of pounds – has gone.

Across the board, Administrators are noting there will likely be just a few pence in the pound available to refund plan holders – see Page 10 of this example where the Administrator states ‘it is envisaged that Planholders who did not opt in to a Dignity funeral plan will receive a partial refund from the Trust. At present it is estimated at less than 10p/£ .’

After discussions with Administrators  / Liquidators, Dignity stepped in to offer rescue plans for clients of six companies, who together had purchased around a hundred thousand funeral plans. The transactional arrangements between Dignity and the Administrators for ‘rescuing’ these plans are not in the public domain.

Unsurprisingly, many of the worried planholders who were offered the alternative of transferring over to a new plan with Dignity took it, but all is not well here either. 

We have heard from a number of bereaved families of planholders who transferred over to Dignity in the hope of receiving the funeral they had paid for in good faith.

When the planholders died and their next of kin called Dignity to activate the plans, these families were told that the plan only covered 40% of the required money for the specified funeral. They were advised that they would have to pay the remaining 60% in order to have the funeral described in the original plan. We are unable to verify this information, but it has come to us from a number of reliable sources.

We are also very aware that many people who purchased their funeral plans from the now defunct companies would have expected their local (non-Dignity) funeral director to be carrying out the funeral. Obviously, where a plan has now been transferred to a Dignity Rescue Plan, this is no longer possible unless the Rescue Plan is cancelled and a new plan taken out, however there are problems here too. 

Planholders (or their bereaved families) who opt to cancel their new Rescue Plan are told: ‘You have a right to cancel your plan any time after we have received the funds from your previous funeral plan provider, without giving us any reason and without having to pay any cancellation fee.‘

So far, so good. But note the caveat ‘any time after we have received the funds from your previous funeral plan provider’. No indication of when this might be. And it goes on:

‘The amount you will receive will be in line with the terms and conditions enclosed in your welcome pack from us. The refunded sum shall be capped at the amount of money received by us in relation to the plan from your previous provider and any subsequent payments made directly from you to us.’

So, in plain English, that means around a hundred thousand people, having paid out something in the region of £200 million for their future funerals (many would have nominated their preferred funeral director who they wanted to carry out the funeral) have been faced with the alternative of either:

  • having the funeral provided by Dignity, with a significant additional payment required, and a penalty for cancelling which may decimate the expected value of the refund,

or 

  • waiting for the final winding up of the company they paid their money to, and seeing what miniscule amount will be repaid to them, with no funeral provision available.

Truly Hobson’s Choice.

As we have said all along, if you are thinking of buying a pre-paid funeral plan, be very, very careful indeed. 

~

Below is the current list of pre-paid funeral plan companies who are not authorised by the FCA. 

If you hold a funeral plan with any of these companies (and hundreds of thousands of people do) – and if you are unsure in any way of how you stand, go to the FCA website to get contact details to check on the status of your plan.

Bristol Memorial Woodlands FP Limited

Did not apply for FCA authorisation

Plans transferred to Plan with Grace Ltd

Capital Life

Application for FCA authorisation withdrawn

Plans transferred to Dignity Funeral Plans Ltd

Darwen Funeral Services

Did not apply for FCA authorisation

Plans transferred to Crystal Cremations Ltd.

Empathy UK Funeral Plans Ltd (Empathy)

Application for FCA authorisation withdrawn

In administration

Planholders were invited to take up Dignity transfer offer or offered a partial refund.

Eternal Peace Funeral Plans Ltd (Eternal Peace)

Application for FCA authorisation refused

Refunds provided to all Planholders

Fox Milton & Co. Ltd (Trading as Unique Funeral Plans)

Did not apply for FCA authorisation

In liquidation. 

No refunds available.

Geo. Hanson & Sons (Hucknall) Ltd (Geo. Hanson)

Application for FCA authorisation withdrawn

Plans transferred to Golden Leaves Limited.

Iberian Funeral Plans (based in Spain)

Did not apply for FCA authorisation

Planholders wishing to have a funeral in the UK have been contacted to provide a refund or offer other arrangements.

Mairi Urquhart & Son Ltd

Application for FCA authorisation withdrawn

Plans transferred to Crystal Cremations Limited

Maplebrook

Application for FCA authorisation withdrawn

Plans transferred to Golden Leaves Limited

Not for Profit Funeral Plans

Did not apply for FCA authorisation

In liquidation

One Life Funeral Planning Ltd.

Application for FCA authorisation refused

In administration

Planholders offered some discounted alternatives from other firms

Paul Young Funeral Director

Did not apply for FCA authorisation

Future of plans uncertain

Pride Planning

Application for FCA authorisation withdrawn

In administration

Planholders were invited to take up Dignity transfer offer or offered a partial refund.

Prosperous Life Limited (Prosperous Life)

Application for FCA authorisation withdrawn

In administration

Planholders were invited to take up Dignity transfer offer or offered a partial refund.

PS Cremations Funeral Planning Limited

Did not apply for FCA authorisation

Company still registered at Companies House

Ready4Retirement

Application for FCA authorisation withdrawn

In liquidation

Most plans transferred to Low Cost Funeral Ltd on same terms. Remaining Planholders offered new, discounted plans by Low Cost Funeral Ltd.

Rest Assured Funeral Plans Limited (Rest Assured)

Application for FCA authorisation withdrawn

In liquidation

Planholders were invited to take up Dignity transfer offer or offered a partial refund.

Safe Hands Funeral Plans Limited

In administration

Under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office

Planholders offered new discounted plans by Dignity Funerals and Co-op Funeralcare

Silver Clouds Later Life Planning

Application for FCA authorisation withdrawn

In administration

Planholders were invited to take up Dignity transfer offer or offered a partial refund

SJP Lichfield

Application for FCA authorisation withdrawn

Plans transferred to Golden Leaves Limited

Sovereign Lifecare Ltd

Did not apply for FCA authorisation

No information on plans

Tyde Group Limited

Did not apply for FCA authorisation

No information on plans

Wren & Fraser

Application for FCA authorisation withdrawn

No information on plans

But what about the ashes?

29 May 2024
Fran Hall
1 Comment
Categories: ashes, cremated remains, cremation
A bag containing cremated remains inside a cardboard box

Recent disturbing incidents in the news continue to cause bereaved families across the UK worry and concern about whether they have been given the correct cremated remains of the person who has died.

We thought it would be helpful to have some clear information in the public domain about exactly what you should expect when you have arranged a cremation and asked for the cremated remains to be returned to you.

We are immensely grateful to Julie Dunk, CEO of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management (ICCM) for providing us with accurate and up to date information, and to Natasha Bradshaw, Superintendent at Mortlake Crematorium in London, for supplying us with the photos used to illustrate this piece. 

Important points to note

Throughout the cremation process, correct identification is an essential element. Crematoria follow careful procedures to ensure that the identity of each coffin received for cremation is checked, and that all of the cremated remains from each individual cremation are kept separate, and collected and placed in one, clearly labelled container. 

The commonly used word for cremated remains is ‘ashes’, which implies a soft, light substance such as when paper is burned or the remnants of a wood fire. This is very misleading when used to describe the substance that you will receive after a person has been cremated.

  • Cremated remains are like a gritty sand, there may be tiny, fine, dust-like particles, but the bulk of the material will be more like gravel. The colour will range from off-white to dark grey.
  • Cremated remains don’t smell and are safe to touch. If you want to transfer them from one container to another, be aware that there will be dust; you may want to wear a mask to avoid breathing this dust in.
  • Cremated remains of an average adult will weigh around 2 – 4 kilos (4 – 8lbs). This is the equivalent of around 2 – 4 bags of sugar. People are  often surprised by the weight.
  • Cremated remains will be returned to you in a container. This may be a cardboard box, with the cremated remains in a plastic bag* within the box, or a plastic jar with a screw top, with the cremated remains either loose or in a bag inside. (*Some enlightened crematoria are now using paper bags rather than plastic.)
  • There will also be a certificate issued by the crematorium called a Certificate of Cremation. This confirms that the cremation took place and may be needed if you are going to scatter or bury the cremated remains at a crematorium or in a cemetery or churchyard. If you are going to keep the cremated remains, or scatter or bury them somewhere private, you can either keep or dispose of the certificate.
  • Whatever type of container is used by the crematorium or funeral director, it should have an identification label with the name and possibly other details such as a cremation number and a date of cremation. There should be a label on the outside of the container, as well as one on the bag inside, if this is used. Some crematoria place a pottery disc in with the cremation, which is then transferred to the cremated remains so they can be identified.
  • If you have chosen your own container for your person’s cremated remains, then either the funeral director or the crematorium will ensure that they are transferred into it. All identification should be available for you to see (the labelled original container, and/ or the labelled internal bag) and the Certificate of Cremation will accompany your container.
  • When you collect cremated remains from a crematorium, you will be asked to sign to show that you have collected them. It’s important to note that only certain people will be allowed to collect them; the person who applied for the cremation or somebody nominated by them, such as the funeral director. You may be asked to provide identification, such as a passport or driving licence to make sure that you are the right person. 
  • If a funeral director has collected cremated remains for you, you will need to make arrangements with the funeral director directly to have the cremated remains returned to you. All documentation and packaging should be as described above.

We hope that this information will provide reassurance to anyone who is worrying about the provenance of the cremated remains they have received. 

Where there continues to be a concern – if, for example, the container or labelling used seems inadequate, or if no Certificate of Cremation was provided to you with the cremated remains – we suggest contacting the funeral director and crematorium concerned and asking them any questions you might have. Hopefully, they will be able to put your mind at rest; issues with the provenance of cremated remains are extremely rare. 

At the Good Funeral Guide, we do our best to help and advise anyone who has had a difficult experience with a funeral, although of course our powers are limited. 

If you have ongoing concerns about cremated remains returned to you, do contact us by emailing Fran at fran.hall@goodfuneralguide.co.uk and we will see if we can assist you.

Where trust is not enough

14 March 2024
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: Arranging a funeral, Funerals, Uncategorised

The recent news about the police investigations at a funeral directors in Hull should rightly concern all of us.

The care of those who have died is a sacred task, one that is usually entrusted to funeral staff when we employ a funeral director to help with organising a funeral.  

We assume that our relatives will be cared for and respected in death, just as they were in life, so to read that this trust may have been betrayed by someone working in the funeral sector is shocking. 

For the many people who are now anxiously waiting for news from the police, the worry that their relative may not have received that care must be devastating. More than a thousand calls have been received at the dedicated helpline set up by Humberside Police for anyone worried about the situation at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors.

Others may now be wondering about the care that their relative received when they were with a funeral director, an uncertainty that would probably have never arisen if this story were not in the news at the moment. 

We know that the vast majority of funeral directors take their role very seriously and treat the people they are caring for with the utmost respect. However, it is crucial you engage a funeral director that you feel comfortable with and trust, and you have every right to ask questions before committing yourself to employing a particular company.  

All good funeral directors will be more than happy to show prospective clients whereabouts their relative will be cared for, and to answer any questions you might have.

You may need to make an appointment to visit the mortuary, but as the person paying for the services of a funeral director, you have every right to ask to see where your person’s body will be while they are in the care of the company you are considering employing. 

You can also ask to see the company’s cremated remains policy, and to ask to be shown the procedures they have in place to ensure that the correct cremated remains are returned to the client following a cremation. 

All good funeral directors will understand just how worrying the current investigations are and will do their best to reassure you that they have watertight procedures in place, and that they and all their staff follow best practice.

If your request to see the mortuary is refused, or if your insistence on reassurance about procedures is met with resistance, then we would recommend changing funeral directors. 

Remember, you are the client, the person who has died is precious to you, and you have to have complete trust that your person is in safe hands.

If you are considering using a direct cremation company,  then these checks will be more difficult, if not impossible to carry out. This is one of the reasons that we only encourage direct cremation carried out by a funeral director who has premises that you can visit, and people that will sit with you and answer any questions you might have.

Almost every funeral director that is Recommended by the Good Funeral Guide will happily show you their mortuary space. One or two feel strongly that the people they are looking after deserve complete privacy, and therefore access to their cold room is restricted to times when they do not have anyone in their care. They will be completely open with you about this if this is the case.

All our Recommended funeral directors will answer any questions that you might have about their processes, procedures and the way that they look after the people in their care.

The Humberside Police direct line for anyone worried about the situation at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors is 0800 051 4674

Our Direct it Yourself Green Funeral

22 February 2024
Fran Hall
2 Comments
Categories: DIY funeral, Funerals

From time to time, we publish guest blogs, and today we are delighted to share this beautiful account by Kirsty O’Leary-Leeson who writes movingly about her personal experience organising a funeral for her mum.

“I am writing this because we shouldn’t be scared of organising funerals; we all go away in the end. I believe that a DIY or Direct it Yourself burial is far simpler than people think and should be encouraged where possible. It wasn’t emotionally easy, but then the death of a loved one never shall be, but I am extraordinarily proud of what my brother and I did for our mum.

In July 2016 my mum was diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer called Multiple Myeloma. It was hoped that with chemotherapy she would have a bit more time. It was not to be and in the early hours of 18th August 2016, my beautiful mum passed away, myself and my brother Simon with her. 

Mum had discussed with me whether to buy a burial plot a couple of years before and I had just laughed and told her to save the money, after all, what if she was lost at sea or blew up in a tragic plane accident, and there was no body to bury!  She had worried about the cost of a funeral, and we had laughingly reassured her that we would just shove her in the back of our people carrier and wouldn’t spend a lot.

As a family we were not scared of discussing death, and approached it with a sense of humour. This helped my brother and I when it came to having to organising an unplanned funeral, as Mum had actually left her body to medical science, not really because science meant a lot to her but so that her small, but hard-earned savings could go to her family and not into burying a body.  However, because of the chemo, mum’s body could not be accepted by our local teaching hospital.

Mum was a bit of a hippy, very spiritual but not religious and we knew she had looked into a green burial site called Nar Valley, in Pentney Kings Lynn, about an hour’s drive away from us. We went and had a look, and it was a peaceful meadow abutting the graveyard of the local church, and we decided that it would be a nice place for mum to lay her bones. 

I had looked into funerals and was shocked at how expensive it all was, particularly how much funeral directors charged and for what? We obviously had to pay for the burial site, but we could save almost £300 by digging the grave ourselves, however we decided that probably by the time we got up to our knees we would be seriously regretting it and decided instead to pay the charge.  We booked it for 31st August, mum’s birthday and two days before her eldest grandaughter left to go travelling in Australia. This didn’t give us much time.

I bought a white cardboard coffin from Ebay, several hundred pounds cheaper than from any website. (It came through the post in another large cardboard box and it said what it was on the outside – must have given the local courier service something to discuss). I am an artist and I began to decorate it in pastel landscapes. I also printed lots of photos of the family and glued them around the edges, plus I asked family and friends to send me cards and poems that were also added. It looked beautiful.

Whilst preparing all this mum’s body remained at the hospital mortuary, this is fine with the hospital and doesn’t cost anything, my brother simply phoned them to organise the day and time of collection and they were happy to wrap/clothe her and put her in the coffin. You just need to take the death certificate with you, and it is considered polite to offer the staff a small thankyou gift. We decided to transport mum from the mortuary to the burial site in a beautiful VW camper van. Mum was a real gypsy at heart and there was no way I was going to put her in a depressing black hearse. I found a local chap on gumtree who hired one out for celebrations and he was very understanding and helpful. My brother collected it the night before, came over to me and picked up the coffin, then the day of the funeral he drove it to the mortuary, picked mum up and drove her to Pentney. The camper van was perfect because the back opened up and the coffin could be easily slid in and out. The curtains could also be pulled closed whilst driving, as apparently you can drive a dead body around quite legally but it shouldn’t be on show. The van had bunting and flowers decorating it, and music could be played on the sound system, so it was very jolly.

At the burial site the camper van drove up close to the grave and family members moved the coffin from the van. It was placed on wooden batons that went over the grave.

Garden chairs were put out at the burial site, and there were no formal flower tributes, I had sent out a request for garden and wild flower posies instead. We were blessed by beautiful weather and the flowers were placed in decorated jars which attracted butterflies.

People began to arrive, and time was spent looking at all the pictures and photos on the coffin. When everyone had arrived we began our little service. I had contacted all the family members, and they could either say something themselves on the day, or send me a poem or some words that they would like to have read out on their behalf. I typed these up into an order of service for my husband Jamie and my sister in law’s father, Trevor, who were both officiating. They read out the welcome that my brother wrote, we had a couple of minutes silence and then I read out my own tribute – I struggled a bit but it meant a lot to do it myself (that’s why I put myself first). Then my brother read out his chosen poem, Jamie and Trevor took it in turns to read out the rest of the poems. My daughter Adara attempted to read hers, but she only got a short way through, so another family member took over, because it was quite informal and relaxed this happened quite naturally. There were no strict timings like you have at churches or crematoriums, we did everything in our own time.

At the end we played a song she had mentioned to my sister in law that she would like, Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ we all laughed and jigged around a bit, and just as it finished four jets flew over in formation, another two had flown over just as we started the service – ok so I can’t promise that this will happen if you DIY a funeral but everything about the day was beautiful and wonderful and although there was sadness and tears I can only think of mum’s burial as a lovely thing.

We decided not to lower the coffin ourselves, we didn’t want to risk it turning into a 70′s BBC farce, we weren’t going to do the throwing in the dirt thing anyway and we thought it would be difficult for the children to see, and so we left the coffin where it was. The lady who owned the burial site had arranged for it to be lowered and filled in within 15 mins or so of our leaving.

We all went off and had a picnic, no getting maudlin at a pub, instead it was fizzy drinks, cups of tea and vegetarian sausage rolls. It was a beautiful day for a beautiful soul.

Over 7 years later, friends and family still talk about it being the most wonderful send-off. Far less of an endurance task than a formal funeral where you are told where to go and what to do and which I have found to be very stressful. It was great not to have any strangers involved, no matter how nice funeral director’s staff are, they are simply doing a job.

I personally have asked to have a ‘direct to cremation’ so no coffins just a celebration at the point of scattering the ashes, however, if any of my four children feel the need to take my body to the crematorium in a decorated cardboard coffin at least they know how to do it.”

Kirsty O-Leary-Leeson

The GFG goes international (part 2)

30 November 2023
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: funeral customs, Funerals, funerals in other cultures

Whilst my fellow directors were attending and leading workshops at the Good Death Festival in the Czech Republic I was off on an adventure of my own – a spur of the moment life’s too short trip to Vietnam but of course I couldn’t quite resist having a little look at how death is done there. 

It’s estimated that some 75% of the population follow what’s called a Vietnamese folk religion. It’s not an organised structure as such, more a set of local worship traditions and family rituals and influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism and no doubt by the many world invaders and colonisers Vietnam has endured in its history. 

Traditional funerals can last for anything from one to three days or more. Browsing through a local market in Hoi An we came across the start of a funeral procession so we stopped to observe and pay our respects. Asking a neighbour how long the procession would last we were told about nine hours so we bid our farewells and carried on shopping. 

Our visit to the Imperial City in Hue, palace of one of the thirteen emperors that once ruled the country, coincided with the annual ritual to commemorate the death of one of the of the emperors, culminating in the ceremonial burning of the emperors clothes and shoes to aid his journey to the next world.

For ordinary folk more cemetery space is needed, especially for those who don’t have easy access to the town and city cemetery, so small burial sites are beginning to be seen, and you may see headstones in gardens or randomly placed in rice and vegetable fields where people are tilling the land around them.

In Hanoi we visited the huge mausoleum where the preserved body of Ho Chi Minh can be viewed. As Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and President until his death in 1969, Ho Chi Minh lived as simply as he could, choosing not to reside in the Presidential Palace, but in a specially built stilt-house in the grounds. He left instructions for his body to be cremated and his ashes spread to North, Central, and South Vietnam, but government officials decided it was to be embalmed instead. 

So we may well leave our wishes clearly recorded, music chosen, dress code requested, resting place carefully considered, family members to be – or not be – invited, it doesn’t mean those we leave behind are going to take any notice. Our funerals may well be about us, but they’re for we leave behind.

The GFG goes international (part 1)

28 November 2023
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: death and funerals, Death; Good death

It’s almost three weeks now since Isabel and I set off to be part of the K smrti dobrý festival – ‘A Festival about death and its presence in our lives’, which took place in Ostrava, in the far eastern part of The Czech Republic. We were invited after our fabulous patron, Zenith Virago, was one of the headline speakers last year and suggested that the Good Funeral Guide should be involved with this fantastic event.

We spent months exchanging emails and holding zoom calls with Jana Slavice, the quietly unassuming woman who works as a death doula and is the powerhouse behind the festival. She gently guided us towards agreeing to offer a  two-hour workshop, a lecture and Q&A session and a two-day workshop at the festival, and she organised all the travel and accommodation for us, as well as the translators that we needed. We simply needed to turn up on time at Stansted airport.

So, we did. I spent the morning measuring and weighing my carry-on luggage after being warned of Ryan Air’s over officious attitude to cabin bags – this turned out to be the most stressful part of the whole experience (and all unnecessary as nobody looked at the extra cm of length, width and depth of the bag I was carrying). Then I joined the queue for security and immediately remembered how hostile the whole process of flying is – it’s been a while since I was on a plane. The whole ‘your mascara is a liquid and therefore must be placed in this tiny plastic bag along with every other item that could ever possibly be described as not a solid, and if the bag can’t be closed you have to decide which items to place in our enormous bin for contraband’  just hurt my head. (It was travel size shampoo, shower gel and conditioner that didn’t make it to Prague in my case. Or not in my case, in fact.)

Anyway, once that drama was over and Isabel and I found each other in departures, the adventure began. And what a time we had! We met amazing, inspirational people, that was the most wonderful part of our week. We had a glimpse of the beautiful city of Prague by night, cabbage soup in a bread roll for supper, an extraordinary, high speed 400km train journey for under £20, a stay in a beautiful villa in the forest outside Ostrava, kind volunteers to drive us to and from the festival and an insight into the vibrant, rapidly growing interest in improving dying, death and funerals in this part of the world.

Hundreds of people had travelled from across Czechia and Slovakia to be part of the festival, which was impeccably organised and run in the cultural centre in Ostrava. Everything was beautiful, the exhibition of delicately decorated coffins in the lobby, the displays of crystals, hand-made shrouds, musical items. And loads of other things, the dressing of the main stage, the stunning painting of the Guardian Owl that had been created especially for the Festival – Jana’s eye for beauty was everywhere.

The packed programme had something for everyone, with talks, music and film screenings in the main auditorium throughout the weekend while workshops took place in smaller rooms. We missed a lot, as there was so much going on, and of course everything was in Czech. We had translators for our workshops and talks, but the rest of the weekend was a hubbub of a language that neither of us had managed to learn more than a few words of. It didn’t matter at all though, as we were really busy. 

We attended workshops run by our first-night-in-Prague-housemates and fellow Brits (no translators needed) Alexandra Grace Derwen, renowned author, ceremonialist and leading facilitator on the doula training course at Sacred Circle Training Co. CIC and Alison Stoecker, former political advisor and writer about grief and trauma. We were gifted the most beautiful books of photographs of dying people by renowned photographer Jindřich Štreit and were also given little pots of chocolate ganache topped with white chocolate skulls. We learned about the Czech customs and laws around funerals, and we discovered that Ostrava kitchen staff find the notion of vegetarianism unusual, (and that fried cheese is a thing…).

We ran an introductory 2-hour workshop on the Friday, delivered a talk about the impact of Covid on funerals in the UK on the Saturday, and then facilitated a 2-day workshop on the Sunday and Monday, introducing a concept that we have been developing together called The Power of Liminal Time.

We had a room full of experienced practitioners who were incredibly generous in sharing their wisdom and knowledge. At the end of the two days, the overwhelming consensus from everyone involved was a deep appreciation and understanding of the potential of the time before, during and after death as a profoundly important opportunity to really experience inner wisdom and peace.

We left Ostrava the following day, returning to Prague for our last hours in Czechia. This time, our train tickets were for business class seats, which apparently involve complimentary Prosecco and pastries, even at 10am. Our fellow travellers clearly were accustomed to this way of travelling, but we opted for orange juice – our whole experience had been bizarre enough without adding in alcohol before lunch!

We came home to the UK early the following morning, feeling both replete and inspired. Being part of the festival had been so nourishing, meeting so many extraordinary people and having so many conversations about the thirst for shared knowledge about how to do death better. 

The Festival in Ostrava is an incredible achievement by Jana, who is already planning next year’s event as something even bigger and better. It has given Isabel and I a springboard from which to launch a series of events here in the UK next year, and we are working hard developing our model and exploring where and when we can offer people an opportunity to come and be part of this exciting new work. Having launched it in Czech (with the assistance of our fantastic translators) we can’t wait to bring it to everyone here. 

Watch this space!

The Climate Emergency. Could your funeral plan be part of the problem?

1 August 2023
Fran Hall
3 Comments
Categories: Environment, The future of funerals

As the UK government congratulates itself on its decision to expand UK fossil fuel exploration, something that is perceived internationally as disastrous, it seems timely to publish this latest piece from our green correspondent:

“We’re starting a journey. We want to understand how funeral plans are potentially fuelling climate breakdown. 

This is a new campaign by the Good Funeral Guide which aims to help people who buy funeral plans better understand the environmental impact of their investment. 

We’re going to start with some numbers:

According to the Financial Conduct Authority there are around 1.6 million funeral plans in existence, held by 26 regulated firms. This does not include those life insurance policies that cover funeral expenses.

Now, according to Funeral Solution Expert calculations, the cost of a funeral plan is between £1,400 and £4,400, depending on whether you opt for a basic or a higher level plan.

The average cost of a plan is £2,800. The total value of held plans is therefore, by our calculations, currently somewhere between £2.2 billion and £4.5 billion. 

These plans are typically held by trusts and whole life funds, which spread the funds across a range of assets such as equities, infrastructure, credit, diversified growth and index-linked gilts.

Equities, diversified growth and credit are all exposed to fossil fuels, meaning that these asset classes are funding the extraction of and exploration for oil and gas. The burning of which is the predominant cause of the climate crisis.  

Analysis by the Good Funeral Guide suggests that between 15% and 60% of a typical funeral plan is invested in equities. 

Let’s say the average is 30%. Would that then mean the funeral planning industry currently has something like £1 billion of funds exposed to fossil fuels, contributing to the destruction of Earth’s life support systems?

Of course, not all of the £1 billion is invested in fossil fuel companies but it’s likely that the figure runs into tens of millions of pounds, at the very least.

How plan providers stack up

We’ve trawled the websites of some of the UK’s best known funeral plan providers for information about how they invest the money that people trust them with. 

Golden Charter – around £459 million of Golden Charter’s funds are invested in global equities, diversified growth and multi-strategy credit, suggesting that potentially at least 35% of its £1.3 billion-fund is exposed to fossil fuels. It’s good that Golden Charter makes its investment information available in the form of annual reviews, however, the reviews lack granular detail about environmental impacts.

Golden Leaves – Golden Leaves funds are managed by the Golden Leaves Trust and according to its website these are invested in index-linked gilts. These are likely to be UK government bonds and are said to be as exposed to fossil fuels as the wider economy. 

Golden Leaves website also states that some plans (zinc, silver and gold) when taken as fixed payment plans are used to buy a whole life insurance policy from SunLife. SunLife is part of the Phoenix Group, whose investments are currently exposed to fossil fuels. However, the business has published a plan to be net zero by 2050.

Open Prepaid – According to the company’s website, the Open Trust Fund invests in equities, which as we’ve learnt are directly exposed to fossil fuels. We were unable to find information about the breakdown of assets held. 

Avalon Funeral Plans – Avalon Funeral Plans website appears to offer no information about the nature of its investments, other than to say that its trust invests through “recognised investment funds”. We can safely assume that there is some exposure to fossil fuels.

Ecclesiastical – Ecclesiastical’s funeral plans are held in an insurance policy which is linked to investments that could be exposed to fossil fuels, our research suggests.

Co-operative Funeralcare – according to our research, Funeralcare’s funeral plans are Royal London life insurance policies, which will be exposed to fossil fuels. However, Royal London has made the same commitment as Phoenix to be net zero on investments by 2050. 

Dignity – Dignity’s website states that funeral plan money is held in the UK Funerals (2022) Trust. We were unable to find information about which assets this invests in, but we should assume exposure to fossil fuels. Dignity’s National Funerals Trust 2022 report shows potentially huge exposure to fossil fuels as equities and credit account for 74% of assets held. 

Our summary

As we said at the start of this blog, we’re on a journey of understanding here. We welcome information from funeral planning companies that clarifies their funds’ exposure to fossil fuels. 

If we have it wrong, we’ll correct the record. But we will accept no opaque comments. We want figures and percentages that deliver clarity to the funeral plan-buying public.

In summarising our research, we make the following four observations:

1. Funeral plans for gas-powered cremation funerals are funding climate change, as the end product or service is a fossil fuel-based process.

2. No funeral plan provider’s website FAQs section has a question about the environmental impact of their investments. This needs to change. All funeral plan providers should publish a public statement outlining their current environmental impact status, detailing the steps being taken to reduce exposure to harmful financial products.

3. Despite FCA regulation, funeral plan investments are incredibly opaque. The public will struggle to find any user-friendly information about the types of assets held and what they mean.

4. Most worryingly of all, no funeral plan provider has a green investment plan. Or if they do, they are doing a fantastic job of hiding it on their website. 

Next steps

Thank you for reading this blog. The next steps are to apply pressure. And we can all do this.

We will be writing directly to all UK funeral plan providers once this blog is published, asking them to provide us with direct and up to date information that we can share with our readers. 

If you are someone who holds a funeral plan to cover your future funeral costs, then please write to your plan provider and ask them for accurate and easy to understand information about their investments and the environmental impact involved. Ask how they are reducing their exposure to / investment in fossil fuels and the timescale involved. They have your money, and you have a right to ask them what they’re doing with it.

If you’re a funeral director – and an appointed representative to provide funeral plans – and feel you should be fully informed about the environmental impact of the funeral plans you offer, please write to your plan provider. We have a template letter here that you can download and use.

Join us on our journey to understand this opaque, multi-million – or billion – pound market, and if need be (it will be!) – to start pushing for change.

Let’s make sure funeral plans are what they are sold as; a way for people to plan for and pay in advance towards their own future funeral costs, not covert vessels for contributing to planetary destruction.”

‘Mooving Funerals’

25 July 2023
Fran Hall
7 Comments
Categories: Marketing, SAIF

We recently had our attention drawn to a new campaign that has been launched by the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF), in conjunction with Westerleigh, the cremation company. The campaign (described as a toolkit) is intended to aid small funeral businesses faced with the aggressive marketing tactics of large direct cremation companies.

We understand how the rapid advance of direct cremation is changing the funeral landscape, so we were interested to see how the trade association for independent funeral directors has responded to this threat to members’ businesses.

Unfortunately, as you will see, it seems that they have got it very wrong indeed. In our opinion, anyway.

One component of the ‘toolkit’ is a video, apparently designed to ‘educate and engage consumers about the value of attended funerals.’ 

It features a farmer, a herd of cows and some men carrying a coffin into a crematorium, with the finishing strapline ‘A mooving funeral can really help your herd say goodbye’. 

There are various clips of the full video that are suitable for use on social media, and SAIF members are encouraged to share ‘this simple but powerful video on your platforms to remind people why funerals matter’.

On behalf of the GFG directors, and with their full agreement, I wrote to the SAIF Chief Executive and the Executive Board of SAIF at the end of June, detailing the multiple issues we have with this video. Our letter is below: 

Dear Terry and Officers of SAIF Executive 2023

I am writing in response to the ‘Mooving Funerals’ publicity campaign that you have launched, and that you are encouraging SAIF members to adopt.

I would like to make some observations about the campaign, both from the personal perspective of a bereaved person, and secondly from a professional standpoint.

To begin with my personal perspective, I feel strongly that the campaign shows a lack of understanding about why the term ‘moving on’ is profoundly unhelpful for bereaved people. It is now widely understood by grief specialists that ‘moving on’ is what those surrounding the bereaved often wish they would do – not something that the bereaved are able to do. Rather they (myself included) need to be supported to integrate the grief and come to terms with it. To find a way to grow from it – and live with it. The lame play on words and the imagery of docile livestock used to support your theme compounds my disquiet; I find the cattle imagery particularly offensive. 

I have shown the campaign material to other bereaved people, who have all reacted in the same way, with surprise and annoyance both at the use of this unhelpful term as the basis for a trade association sponsored PR campaign, and at the visual interpretation of  wordplay on the ‘moving on’ term of a herd of cows representing a bereaved family. 

From a professional standpoint, this campaign does not appear to contend with the serious issue of the increasing numbers of direct cremations and the impact this is having on the profession.  It does not address the many reasons why people choose a direct cremation;  a SAIF campaign that sought to do so could have been a great opportunity to show how creative, involving and therefore helpful (therapeutic?) an attended funeral can be. Instead, we have a blend of attention-grabbing animal casting along with the usual, tired images of men carrying a coffin into a crematorium.

Even if some viewers find the video cute or funny, I very much doubt that it will make anyone think clearly enough to change their mind about direct cremation. There is no attempt to address the underlying motivations of choosing an unattended funeral, or the very real consequences of missing out on the chance to say a collective farewell. The critical purpose of the video fails because of these fundamental flaws.

For all the reasons above, I am extremely surprised that SAIF has decided that this campaign is appropriate for members to adopt and use in their advertising and social media. 

I am very concerned that should any members choose to do so, individual companies will risk offending many people in their communities, losing potential future business while simultaneously failing to stem the haemorrhage of attended funerals in favour of the aggressively marketed direct cremation companies. 

I would urge you to reconsider your support for – and promotion – of this campaign.

With best wishes

A few days later, we received a response which read as follows:

Dear Fran,

Thank you for taking time to express the views of the GFG on the first iteration of the SAIF Direct Cremation toolkit.  The video is one component of the toolkit.

It is never easy to address the theme of death in our society.  Interestingly the retired English cricketer, Andrew Strauss, wrote about his wife’s death in 2018 from lung cancer and how the subject is still a difficult subject to raise in our society.

The video is for those who are making plans, so to inform their options in order to avoid the potential risk that an unattended cremation may harm their grief journey when they may not fully understand what they are entering into.

Your letter has been shared with the SAIF leadership as requested.

Warm wishes

It seems, therefore, that SAIF are committed to this bovine-centric video campaign as a way of addressing the rapid advance of direct cremation companies into the funerals market.

We will be curious to see how SAIF members respond. Is this something that SAIF members welcome from their trade association? Or is there a similar level of disquiet as we have about the messaging? And what about the public reaction?

We would be very interested to hear what readers of this blog think – do please comment below.

(We did inform SAIF that we would be publishing both our letter and their response on the GFG blog)

1,000 days

15 July 2023
Fran Hall
3 Comments
Categories: Absolute Beginner - A Personal Story of Grief

Today it is 1,000 days since Steve died.

It feels right to acknowledge this somehow, at least by writing something. I don’t feel inclined to go and spend time by his grave, unlike at the more ancient markers of time, when the seasons turn at the solstices; I’m always drawn there then. Today is more thoughtful, less instinctive. A thousand is a made-up thing, a round number that’s not relatable to the rhythm of days and weeks and months and years, it’s just a familiar four digits, that denominate ‘a lot.’ 

A thousand days. I remember the disbelief of those very early hours and days after he died – the idea of a future me writing about living on for a thousand days without him was beyond my comprehension, and yet here I am. And I’m mostly ok. I think that that’s the point of this blog post.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t ‘moved on’, or ‘recovered’ or ‘got over it’ or any of those other hopeful phrases that people use, from the enviable perspective of not having experienced this. I’ve just kept getting up and getting through the days, gradually accepting the changed world that I inhabit without him. Without us. Without me, as I used to be. I am changed forever. Scarred forever. This is, I think, the work of a lifetime, this accepting of what is. This grieving. This living on.

And yet I do feel a distance from the horrors of those five weeks between our wedding and Steve’s funeral. How could I not? The sun has risen and set a thousand times since the day he died. Memories fade, the searing pain subsides. I am further along the road of the rest of my life.

I have a dear friend whose partner died suddenly, in January this year, and we talk on the phone every Sunday. She knew Steve and loved him, and they shared a birthday, so the friendship has a special root, albeit separated by hundreds of miles. When her partner died, she was suddenly plunged into the deep waters of grief where I had been two years before. And hard though it is to be confronted with these turbulent, powerful, painful emotions again, I know how important it is for me to keep showing up to be there for her. In those weekly, long-distance conversations, I feel as if I am a way ahead of her, travelling along a road that neither of us want to be on. 

I hear in her pain and anger and tears the echoes of my own despair from those early days, and I recall the absolute kindness and generosity shown to me by other women who were ahead of me when I first found myself on this long, lonely path. Kind, generous women, whose husbands or partners had died, who recognised themselves in my loss and who took the time to call, to write, to text, to check in on me. Women who knew. I realise just how precious a gift they gave me. They held a light ahead of me, living their lives after unbearable loss, and they let me see that life would unfold and time would pass, and survival was possible. 

I now find myself trying to do the same thing for my friend. Somehow, this feels like the natural order of things, to assume my role in turn, to reach out to the bewilderment and sadness of someone newly bereaved and face the memory of the horror of my own immediate past. I know that the only thing to do is to listen, bear witness, and at the same time, just by being, offer a glimpse of reassurance that there will be a future, of some kind. This is what was done for me, by brave women, carrying their own grief with kindness. Not trying to fix what can’t be fixed.

It’s as if there’s a long chain of us, each going forward and yet ready to look back and help someone arriving on this particular road. It took some time to be capable of this, of thinking of someone else instead of being immersed in my own sadness. I spent a lot of time trying to find ways to stop the pain before I realised that there was no way of doing so, I just had to keep going, keep feeling the sadness, keep putting one foot in front of another to get through the days stretching ahead.

I think it was some time after the first anniversaries had all rolled past that I emerged from the misery enough to begin to think of others. That first year is a bit of a blur, to be honest, but once I had hauled myself into the second year, after the anniversary of Steve’s funeral, the reconciling to the new normal began. It’s only time that helps ease the intensity of the pain, time – and distance from the maelstrom of emotions, the deep, deep grieving. As I said, I don’t believe there is such a comforting thing as ‘moving on’, not in my experience, more a ‘muddling through’, but, as the days and seasons turn, there is a settling. 

That’s not to say that the raw anguish of grief disappears completely. I’ve found that it is always there, just under the surface, an unhealed wound with a fragile scar formed above it. And it takes just the smallest of things to rip open that scar and expose all the agony again – perhaps a refrain of a song, the sound of a familiar car, a glimpse of a stranger with a similar build. For people who aren’t burdened with the Long Covid long-term loss of taste and smell, I’m sure catching a scent must do the same, but I’m still in a muted world without these senses. That’s another layer of grief, but a different one. 

But the fragility of the scars we form – just last week, I was queueing to pay for groceries, and a couple were in front of me at the till. She was talking to the cashier and packing the shopping away, and then he ambled up and reached into his back pocket for his wallet to pay, an easy, familiar movement that was so clearly something he’d done hundreds of times before. It was like a knife in my heart, witnessing this humdrum moment in strangers’ lives. That was us, from then, back in the day. Steve always did exactly that, just the same casual ‘I’m paying for this’ movement., And then, just like the unknown man did, he would always pick up the bags and carry them. 

Moments like that sneak up on you and command your attention. That voice inside murmurs ‘this was you and him. And you didn’t appreciate the profoundness of the ordinary. Now you’ll never have that again’. I stood in the shop crying silently. And then I paid for my shopping and carried on. 

This is the new normal. Carrying on. Carrying the sadness. . With a thousand days of learning how to be. And mostly ok.