Author: Fran Hall

1,000 days

15 July 2023
Fran Hall
4 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.

Cremating Poppy: Oh, if only I had..!

6 July 2023
Fran Hall
2 Comments
Categories: Pet funerals

Guest post by former GFG Director John Porter

On 20th May 2023, our beloved Poppy was put to sleep. We knew this act of love, mercy and kindness was the right decision and it was handled with great sensitivity and compassion by our vet. Poppy was with us 13½ years and, unbeknown to me, I took her for her final walk the day before she died. She was a precious member of our family and, as her guardians, we loved, cherished and nurtured her with all our heart. Our home is empty without her, yet she is everywhere. There is an urgency about what I would like to share with you now.

As a former director of The Good Funeral Guide and funeral celebrant since 2014 you may think I would have thought through everything concerning Poppy’s death and what we would do with her body. I hadn’t and, as things turned out, paid a high emotional price for not doing so. I’m not a person who uses the phrase ‘if only’ but found myself saying it over and over.

I did think about meeting with the vet a couple of months ago and researching pet cremation companies but did not act on this intention. We had though, at least, decided to cremate her. The first huge clue of my unpreparedness was when the vet asked me to sign a form just before she administered the injection. I had no idea what I was signing and was in no state to ask. My focus was on Poppy, now being cuddled and stroked by my husband as she laid on a beautiful light blue blanket with white paw prints on it. This was a moment of profound peace and love. As I joined them the vet mentioned the name of the pet cremation company and something about a scattering tube. I could not take it in.

We left half an hour later without her. Heartbroken. During those first few hours of acute pain and sadness some fledgling questions began to form in my mind:

What is this pet cremation company like?

Why does she have to be transported 90 miles away?

What scattering tube did we choose?

Can she go with her special blanket?

When will she be cremated?

When can we collect her ashes?

We checked the company’s website and felt she would be treated with dignity and respect. I called them on the Monday and the person I spoke with was very understanding, compassionate and sensitive to our needs. We felt very assured. She asked me to write down our special instructions and email them to the vet practice. This is what we sent:

  1. They confirmed they were happy that Poppy can be transported in their care on her rug that we will deliver to the practice before she is picked up from you to go to the pet crematorium this Friday.
  2. The rug is not to be cremated with Poppy but returned to us with her cremains to the vet practice for us to pick up when ready.
  3. We ask that Poppy’s cremains be placed in a C02 scatter tube (not a C01 box that we discussed with the pet cremation company this morning).
  4. We will deliver an alternative Dog Paws scatter tube that we have ordered and deliver it to the Thornton Practice when it arrives by next Monday. We would like the cremains to be transferred to this prior to our collection if possible. If not, we will do this.
  5. We would like to know the day and approximate time that Poppy will be cremated by email (address given) or text to John Porter’s mobile (number given) so we can remember her in our own private way.

The tube arrived early on Thursday so we delivered it to the vet practice and they said they would make sure it would travel with her the next day. For some reason I felt I should check with the crematorium company this was okay. 

This was the call when things started to go wrong. The person I spoke with this time was insensitive and uncaring. She said: “It’s against our policy for customers to supply their own scattering tubes.” She added: “…you’ll have to call head office for a copy.” I was shocked and spoke with their Head of Customer Service & Sales who was very apologetic and said she would speak with the person concerned. She gave a reason for the policy being to prevent damage in transit to customer supplied scattering tubes. (I can hear the funeral directors and celebrants among you sighing, knowing there is always a way to resolve an issue—in this case bubble wrap and a strong cardboard box!)

Poppy was picked up as planned on Friday 26th May, the bank holiday weekend. I telephoned the pet cremation company the following Tuesday as I had not heard when Poppy would be cremated (point 5 above). I spoke to the same insensitive person and this is how she responded to my question: “Oh she was cremated on Sunday at 6pm.” She said it in such a casual, flippant way I was shocked, angry and overcome with sadness all in the same moment. I could hardly speak. The impact of her uncaring attitude had a profoundly negative impact on me. We had decided we did not want to attend the cremation event (I now know we couldn’t have anyway) but we would have paused, lit a candle and remembered her around the time of her body’s transformation.

I telephoned the Head of Customer Service & Sales again and could sense the despair and concern in her voice. She said she would, that week, visit the site and speak with the staff to get to the bottom of why I had been spoken to so insensitively and put any training needed and policy reviews in place. For me, however, it was no remedy. I had to experience, process and live with the pain it caused and the feelings towards them I was left with at such an emotionally charged time. The next day a large bouquet of flowers arrived as an apology. As I put them in a vase another wave of sadness welled within me. This gesture was well intentioned but to me it felt hollow.

Poppy was brought back to the vet practice the following Friday and we requested her ashes be brought out to us as we waited by our car. What happened next was a beautiful demonstration of respect, compassion, dignity and love that overwhelmed us in a positive way. Tears of joy ebbed and flowed amidst our grief. We were watching the front entrance. Another entrance gate to the left of the practice was opened by a nurse to allow the receptionist to carry her precious gift towards us. Poppy’s carefully folded special blanket was placed on her outstretched arms with the presentation box containing her ashes in the paw prints tube on top. It was as though she was carrying the Crown Jewels towards us. We melted. Her demeanour was amazing; she looked at us with clear compassionate eyes and with a respectful smile said two simple words: “Here’s Poppy.” She stepped back. We thanked her and there was a silent pause of acknowledgement and thanks before we parted. Perfect!

Her tube now sits on the bottom shelf of a bookcase next to C.S. Lewis, Tolkien and The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—a spot that Poppy spent many contented snoozing hours next to me as I worked. We will decide what we do with her ashes when we are ready.

My earnest plea to all animal guardians is to please learn from my experience and think and talk about what you will do and what your wishes are before your beloved animal passes. Much of what the Good Funeral Guide suggests concerning humans can be applied to animals too. I now know there are many amazing pet burial and cremation companies across the UK.

Sometimes our beloved animal’s death can come unexpectedly, so now is the time to act. Please don’t follow my poor example and be left with many ‘if onlys’. Writing this guest blog is helping me to offer help to you. I will write more about grief and animals, lessons learned and practical tips another time. 

John Porter, June 2023

Lonely Funerals: Compassionate Verses

30 May 2023
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: Funerals, Poetry

It’s been a while since we posted on the GFG Blog, but this weekend, we heard about a project in Scotland that is too important not to share with our readers.

Michael Hannah is an independent funeral celebrant based in Dundee. He has generously written this guest post for us.

For many of us, the idea of a good funeral evokes images of a packed crematorium or a crowded graveside. Of course the readers of this blog are likely to have considered more deeply than most, exactly what constitutes a “good funeral”. But our ideas will usually involve people – friends and family gathering together to mourn, honour and celebrate a life. 

Sadly, this ideal is not always realized; some of us will die alone, and for a small minority, no-one turns up for that final send-off. As a celebrant, I quickly came to recognize the sharp poignancy of the sparsely attended ceremony, the “nearly lonely” funeral.

Then, as a student on Glasgow University’s End of Life studies MSc, I read about a Lonely Funeral project in the Netherlands. This began in 2001, when the poet Bart Droog started to attend these sad events to which no-one else came. He honoured them with poems inspired by whatever biographical details existed. Poetry is well suited to creating stories out of fragments – a photograph, a passport, a police report. 

The idea spread and now operates in several Dutch and Belgian cities. An anthology of the poems and back stories has been published. These stories offer insights into how people arrive at such a lonely end to their life – social isolation through ageing, mental health issues, homelessness, marginalization.

Such issues are hardly unique to the Netherlands, so I wondered if similar initiatives existed in Scotland and the UK. It seemed not, though everyone I spoke to about the project told me what a beautiful and moving idea it was.

And then I met a local poet, Andy Jackson, who already knew about the project, having heard one of the Dutch founders speak at a festival in St Andrews. Together we decided to invest a little more energy and organization into the idea, and in November last year, held an event as part of the To Absent Friends storytelling festival. That provoked a lot of media interest – locally and nationally – and created a sense of momentum.

Projects like this take their time to develop though – there are sensitivities to be negotiated, and trust to be built with potential local gatekeepers and champions. But early in May we conducted what we think is the first Lonely Funeral to be held in Scotland. A quiet, sad but dignified moment in a cemetery on the outskirts of Dundee. The gleaming black hearse pulled up at the grave, the funeral directors and cemetery staff lowered the coffin, Andy read the poem he’d written in just two days from the little that was known, I stood a little way back with the case worker from social services. Afterwards, we chatted for a little while and then all drifted off. Back at his desk, Andy posted a report for Lapidus Scotland, the organization that has been supporting this project.

In time, the grass will grow back and the grave will lie unmarked. A few days after the funeral, as we chatted about how it had gone, Andy remarked on the sadness of that lonely patch of grass but said that at least the poem would serve as a headstone. Yes, Andy, and what a headstone!

Reference

Inghels, M. & Starik, F., 2018. The Lonely Funeral: Poets at the gravesides of the forgotten. Todmorden: Arc Publications. [English translation]

The Poem

For Derek

I step into the boxroom of your life,
tiptoe round the shrouded furniture,
shapeless islands on the exposed floor.

Who lived in this room, and what kind of light
fell through its window before the fixtures
and fittings of time could bear no more?

I cannot know, and yet am drawn to the walls,
sandwiched with paper and emulsion,
layer on layer, overlain with eggshell years.

I tug at a peeling edge and pull, and a small
corner tears away in my hand. I imagine
you with your brush and bright paint, here

in the midst of what you were, applying
primer, undercoat, topcoat, glossing
and touching up, each coat a moment

preserved: maybe damage you were trying
to make good, or faith in the face of closing
doors, working the quiet job with devotion.

Here are the patterns of a family, of love
built up but somehow broken. Below
is the lining paper of a childhood, too dark

to be a colour. Below that, I cannot look,
and so I will put away my pen and go
from this room, empty now as a stilled heart.

Let these words know a painter’s touch,
and their simple strokes be just enough
to show the world the keenness of your brush.

Andy Jackson, May 2023

The infamous Richard Sage

12 November 2022
Fran Hall
1 Comment
Categories: Richard Sage

Currently going by the name Mark Kerbey, we have news about Richard Sage, serial fraudster notorious to readers of this blog.

For more than three decades, this gentleman has been defrauding individuals and organisations, resulting in more than 40 counts of fraud and a number of stretches in prison.

At Basildon Crown Court some four years ago, his ‘several severe life-threatening conditions’ and ‘bleak future because of coronary heart disease’ resulted in his most recent jail sentence being suspended for two years. This conviction resulted from his defrauding a vulnerable elderly couple, who had paid him £3,000 deposit for their funeral plans.

People living in Westcliff-on-Sea, Erith or Colchester might recognise Mr Kerbey, miraculously recovered from his several severe life threatening conditions, as the funeral director involved with Trinity Funeral Homes, a company that has three branches in Essex and offers ‘Affordable funerals from £695*’

We have written an in-depth piece charting the appalling catalogue of crimes in the chequered past of Sage / Kerbey, you can read it here if you’re interested.

In the meantime, we strongly advise that nobody engages Trinity Funeral Homes without extensive research into the person you are dealing with.

The Coroner’s Service (or lack of)

31 August 2022
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: Coroners

We recently heard from someone who is at their wits’ end. They are waiting for an inquest into their parent’s death. Their parent died on the Isle of Wight in May 2020. The coroner was involved, and an inquest is required. But here we are, 120 weeks on, and a date for the inquest has not yet been scheduled.

According to the Ministry of Justice’s most recent version of ‘A Guide to Coroner Services for Bereaved People’, section 5.2 states ‘The inquest hearing should take place within six months or as soon as reasonably possible after a death has been reported to the coroner. 

Our correspondent has been waiting more than two years for the inquest to take place. They still don’t have a date for it. They have tried every avenue to attempt to get an answer as to why they are waiting so long, and been rebuffed at every turn.

Unfortunately, the MP responsible for the Isle of Wight constituency, Bob Seely. is unlikely to step in and help, because our correspondent is not one of his constituents. This is notwithstanding the fact that the person who died – and whose inquest is so extremely delayed – was a constituent of his. Previous attempts to solicit his support by our correspondent elicited this response; “It is against parliamentary convention that an MP correspond with another MP’s constituent.”

Perhaps, as the vote of our correspondent’s parent is no longer available to him, he sees no need to assist their bereaved and increasingly distraught family who sought his support. Or maybe he is just too busy. He does, after all, have the largest electorate of any constituency of the Houses of Parliament. 

Step forward a representative of the Upper Chamber. In July, having met our correspondent and been appalled at the length of time they have had to wait, Fiona Hodgson, or rather The Baroness Hodgson of Abinger CBE, tabled the following written parliamentary questions:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether there is a backlog for holding inquests as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic; and if so, how this varies across the regions of the country. (HL2019)

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether there is a backlog for inquests in the Isle of Wight; and if so, what steps they are taking to clear that backlog. (HL2020)

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the average time it takes from death to holding an inquest, where necessary. (HL2021) 

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the experience of families waiting for an inquest to take place; and what bereavement support they are providing to these individuals. (HL2022) 

The response from Lord Bellamy, Minister of Justice, grouped the questions together to provide the following answer:

The Coroner Statistics 2021: England and Wales, published on 12 May 2022, indicate that, on average in 2021, the time between the report of a death to the coroner and the completion of an inquest increased to 31 weeks (up from 27 weeks in 2020), although almost a third of coroner areas completed inquests within 24 weeks. Figures are also published by coroner area: for the Isle of Wight coroner area, the average time for completion of an inquest was 56 weeks (from 40 weeks in 2020).

Coroner services are locally based and funded and administered by the relevant local authorities. The Government recognises that local authorities have experienced a number of pressures as a result of the pandemic. During 2021, coroners dealt with both the impacts of the early stages of the pandemic and the ongoing effect of Covid, including a second lockdown and continued social distancing measures which, in particular, affected the ability to hold jury and other large and complex inquests.

We have provided £6.15 billion in unringfenced grant funding to local authorities in England to support the cost of pandemic pressures which could include additional costs incurred in the administration of coroner services. Funding for local authorities in Wales is a devolved matter. The Chief Coroner has issued guidance to coroners on how their services can best recover from the pandemic, including engagement with local authorities on any additional resources required. He is also undertaking a tour of all coroner areas to engage with them on their post-pandemic recovery plans.

In addition, we included a package of measures in the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 to streamline coroners’ court processes and support the coronial system with post pandemic recovery plans.

The Government’s priority is to ensure that the bereaved remain at the heart of the coroner system. In January 2020, we published a revised Guide to Coroner Services for Bereaved People which provides support and information for the bereaved about what they should expect from coroners’ investigations and inquests, and includes information on sources of bereavement support. The Guide is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guide-to-coroner-services-and-coroner-investigations-a-short-guide.

Hmm. Not exactly answering those very specific questions posed by the Baroness. More of a ‘not our fault guv’ kind of response.

So, what is going on? Particularly, what is going on on the Isle of Wight?

Reading in more detail the paper referenced by Lord Bellamy, section 10 refers to the time taken to process an inquest. It states:

“The time taken to process an inquest varies by coroner area – the maximum average time taken to process an inquest in 2021 was 75 weeks in Inner South London, and the minimum average time was 11 weeks in Liverpool and the Wirral. This disparity between regions is mainly due to differences that exist from one coroner area to another. Some of these differences are:

  • Availability of resource, staff and judicial resources
  • The presence of facilities like hospitals and prisons situated near boundary lines
  • Socio-economic make up of regions’

In their Response to the Justice Committee into the inquiry into the Coroner Service the Royal College of Pathology indicated that they also are concerned about the wide variation in coronial service across England and Wales.

We understand that the Isle of Wight inquest hearings were halted during the various coronavirus pandemic lockdowns because of public safety. Isle of Wight Coroner Caroline Sumeray explained in an article written in February last year that there was no dedicated space for inquests as the coroner’s court shared space with the Island’s other court services, and that the room inquests usually were heard in did not comply with government guidelines due to a lack of ventilation. 

She also said that another reason inquests were being held up was because witnesses from the Isle of Wight NHS Trust are involved but as they are treating and caring for many people still suffering with the virus, “treating the living must be their priority”.

But we also note that we are now in August 2022. And there are still unacceptable delays.

We had a look at the website for the Isle of Wight Coroner to see if any further light could be shed on the excessive delay experienced by our correspondent waiting for the inquest into their parent’s death. None was forthcoming – the home page simply informed us that:

‘The Coroners office is currently closed to the public.

To remain covid safe this service is being delivered remotely. Currently no officers are working from the Seaclose Offices.

Due to these unprecedented times the Coroners Office workstreams have increased. It will take longer for a Coroners Officer to respond to any telephone messages. 

Please email your enquiry to coroners@iow.gov.uk where the response may be quicker.’

The FAQs section of the website was even less helpful.

The Inquests page of the same website indicates that our correspondent is not alone in having to wait an unforgiveable length of time before an inquest takes place – on the ‘regularly updated’ list of inquest dates it cites an inquest scheduled for 01.08.22 for a young man who died on 16.12.2019 – a wait of more than 135 weeks.

(Interestingly, and completely coincidentally, an article appeared in one of the Isle of Wight papers this week on exactly this subject, and the paper managed to secure a response from Ms Sumeray which goes into much greater detail about the increased workload and practical restrictions that are impacting her and her team).

We took a more detailed look at the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022, referenced by Lord Bellamy in his response. The Act received Royal Assent in April, and with our limited understanding of legal terminology, seems primarily to make provision for uncontested inquests to take place in writing rather than in person and to allow inquest hearings to be conducted wholly or in part by the ‘electronic transmission of sounds or images’, along with some other changes to requirements of coroners. 

In passing, and taking us somewhat off on a tangent, we noted, with resignation, that a proposed House of Lords amendment to the Act that would have provided bereaved families with publicly funded legal representation at inquests where public bodies such as the police or hospital trusts were involved was voted down by the government ‘because it would involve a charge on public funds’.  

This leaves us with the status quo continuing, wherein public funding for bereaved families to receive legal representation at inquests is only available in exceptional cases and the application process to obtain such legal aid is extremely demanding for families, at a time of their greatest need. Eligibility for legal aid in these exceptional cases is then subject to means testing. 

Under the system that the House of Commons voted to continue by defeating the proposed amendment, many families are forced to represent themselves, or privately fund legal representation at significant cost. The proposed amendment would have undoubtedly gone some distance in bridging the ‘inequality of arms’ that exists between bereaved families and state bodies who have access to publicly funded legal representation, but despite the best efforts of members of the House of Lords, the government have deemed this inequality must continue.

So, if our correspondent’s parent were to have died because of actions or inactions by a NHS Trust, for example, not only is our correspondent suffering from the prolonged wait of well over two years for the inquest to take place, but they will also have to fund the costs of legal representation when the hearing does happen.

It is hard – if not impossible – to see how this, in any way, meets the government’s statement that their priority is to ensure that the bereaved remain at the heart of the coroner system. The public coffers appear to trump the needs or rights or wellbeing of bereaved families, hands down.

Thank goodness, therefore, for unelected peers. 

The indefatigable Baroness Hodgson is not letting this case go. She is not simply accepting the brush-off from the Ministry of Justice. She’s in ongoing communication with our correspondent, and she has offered to put down further parliamentary questions when the House returns from recess to pursue this matter further. Unlike the elected MP for the Isle of Wight, Baroness Hodgson is going out of her way to try and help a bereaved family who are, as yet, without any idea when the inquest into the death of their beloved parent might take place.

On behalf of all families who are in a similar position, we would like to express our gratitude for the Baroness’s tenacity and determination to help someone who has lost their parent and who is waiting for answers as to why.

And we sincerely hope that the situation on the Isle of Wight in particular shows significant improvement in the very near future.

Direct cremation

24 August 2022
Fran Hall
5 Comments
Categories: direct cremation

We have a lot of thoughts about direct cremation. 

Mostly, we have questions. Particularly about the pricing.

How are these ultra low costs for what is a labour-intensive service achieved? 

Who is carrying out the physical collection and care of the people who have died? Where are they taken to? Where are they kept until the date of the cremation? In what facilities? Who has oversight of any subcontracted companies to ensure standards are maintained? What type of coffin will they be placed in? Will they be washed and dressed in their own clothes or just placed in the coffin as they were when they died? Are the bodies of these people cared for with the respect and dignity that you would want for a person you loved?

As an organisation dedicated to raising awareness about the difference that a good funeral can make to people’s experience of grief and bereavement, it is perhaps unsurprising that we’re not ardent advocates of the direct disposal of the body of someone who has died.

We understand that for some people, a direct cremation might be absolutely the right thing, but we caution very careful consideration of the impact of choosing not to have a ceremony with the silent presence of a coffin at its centre. We have seen enough wonderful funeral ceremonies to know what a transformative effect these can have on people still raw with loss and grief. 

We encourage everyone to reflect on the importance of facing the reality of the death of someone they love by spending time with their body, by helping to care for it, to carry it, to be in the presence of their coffin at a funeral ceremony and to take time to allow the full impact of their absolute absence to gradually sink in. 

We think that funerals matter.

For this reason, we are particularly unimpressed by clever advertising campaigns that reinforce the idea that nobody wants to have a funeral, that funerals equal ‘a lot of fuss’, that deciding to arrange a pre-paid direct cremation is the best way of looking after your family when you die. Marketing people know a lot about subliminal persuasion, and this narrative that funerals are an unnecessary, expensive nuisance is being insidiously planted in the minds of people who are already anxious about coping with the soaring cost of living and the energy crisis.

You can read our guide to direct cremation on the main GFG website here, where our general approach to the subject is laid out. We haven’t felt moved to comment further about it – until recently. But a number of things have brought direct cremation bubbling back to the top of topics for the GFG blog. 

Our research for last week’s post about the price of cremation coincided with us noticing the relentless adverts for national direct cremation providers being played on Sky News in the background as we worked. 

And then someone brought our attention to the plethora of ‘direct cremation’ companies springing up all over the internet offering bargain basement prices. Prices for the total direct cremation service that are less than a single cremation fee at many crematoria. Inexplicably low, ridiculous prices. 

Like Celebration of Life, advertising their fee as ‘from £850’ – for the collection of a person from ‘anywhere in Great Britain’, the supply of a coffin, use of the mortuary facilities, the removal of a pacemaker if required and a direct cremation at the company’s ‘partner crematorium’. For an extra £40, you can have the ashes returned to you by hand. Again, anywhere in the UK.

Just stop and think about it for a moment. The costs involved with staffing and travelling to facilitate this service ‘anywhere in Great Britain’ don’t make sense unless you have a nationwide network of some sort.

But this particular company, Celebration of Life Cremations Ltd, is registered at a Southampton address. Not exactly a central location for facilitating their ‘trusted funeral services across Great Britain’. Or for getting a person to bring your ‘beautiful biodegradable scatter pod’ containing the ashes back to you ‘on a day that suits you’ for just an extra £40. What happens if you live in Cumbria? Or Aberdeen? Or Cornwall? How does £40 cover that service?

We had a look at the latest accounts for Celebration of Life Ltd. at Companies House and note that at the end of June this year, their net assets were £2,230, they declare over £75,000 of creditors and list just two employees.

This piqued our interest, and we started to take a closer look at the various providers offering nationwide direct cremation services as a solution to all the difficult financial and emotional impacts that a funeral ceremony appears to bring (according to their marketing pitches).

We found that the direct cremation providers offering services covering the entire country appear to fall into various categories; internet-based companies, cremator operator companies and funeral directing companies. Oh, and then Pure Cremation, which is a fully dedicated direct cremation company with its own crematorium. 

We also realised that there seem to be some rather opaque, behind-the-scenes arrangements enabling the logistics of nationwide collection, cremation and return of ashes by the direct cremation companies that aren’t subsidiaries of funeral businesses. 

Looking at the internet-based companies first, we have Farewill, a London based company that advertises their direct cremation as ‘from £950’ (but you need to contact them to get an exact quote). They are a subsidiary of a larger group whose principal activity is the provision of financial services. The group’s most recent filing at Companies House shows a loss after taxation for the year ending 31 July 2021 of £6,749,228. The previous financial year, group losses of over £4 million were posted. (Notwithstanding this, the directors ‘do not consider that there is any serious doubt over the ability of the Group to continue to operate for a period of at least twelve months from the date of this report’).

Incorporated as Bare Funerals UK Ltd at Companies House in January 2022, Bare Cremation seems to be a UK subsidiary of an Australian business with the same name – they certainly display the same 1,014 reviews on their clone version of the Australian website, and the sole shareholder of Bare Funerals UK Ltd is the Australian private company. Clients are assured that they operate across mainland UK, that people who have died are taken to a mortuary facility in Cannock, and that cremation will take place at one of several crematoria owned and operated by the Westerleigh Group. Bare Cremation appear to have taken advantage of the trade partnership offered by Westerleigh’s Distinct Cremations service, which offers exactly this service. The Bare Cremation £1,145 price is advertised as ‘one simple upfront price that includes everything. No footnotes, no extra fees, no surprises. Ever.’

Neo Cremations offer their ‘eco-friendly cremations’ at £1,295 plus doctor’s fee if applicable. Their website has lots of information about their environmental credentials and their carbon offsetting, but nothing about how they carry out the practical side of their work, nor where the cremations take place. Co-founded by a former partner in a global equity firm and a self-described ‘Accomplished ‘full funnel’ marketing executive’ , the company is based in London and is a trading name of Serenity Technologies Ltd, a company incorporated in 2019 which has one director. Their most recent accounts show that the average monthly number of employees, including directors, was 2.

Another company offering a direct cremation service for the extraordinarily low price of £850 is Tyde, based in Crawley, in Sussex. They operate a direct cremation service across England and Wales. Tyde Group Ltd’s most recent accounts at Companies House show the number of employees of this company as ‘Nil’, and a deficit of £49,992 total assets less current liabilities. Reading through their Ts & Cs we note that they state potential clients acknowledge ‘that elements of the funeral package and associated products will be fulfilled by our carefully selected partners’.

Remember that last line. Outsourcing the logistics is likely to be relevant to all internet-based direct cremation providers – and possibly also at times to cremator operator direct cremation providers.

Let’s have a look at those cremator operator direct cremation providers. 

Distinct Cremations advertise their fee as £895. They describe themselves as ‘the UK’s best value direct cremation services, expertly delivered by the UK’s leading cremation services provider, at affordable prices’. They are the direct cremation service offered by The Westerleigh Group Ltd, a cemetery and crematoria development company with 37 crematoria across England, Scotland and Wales They have a purpose built mortuary in Staffordshire and a fleet of vehicles, along with a funeral team who carry out collections and the care of people who have died

The other cremation company that has diversified into direct cremation provision (thus generating the supply of coffins to be cremated) is Affordable Funerals, formerly known as Low Cost Funerals and a subsidiary of Memoria Ltd.

Advertising their Affordable Funerals direct cremation prices from £990, Memoria now have a Funeral Division (well, they will have if enough funeral directors sign up to do the work for them, we refer you back to our previous blog post) – in a wordy, minimally punctuated statement from Howard Hodgson, CEO, we are told; “My family have been funeral Directors since 1850. Today, we represent a national network of our own staff and funeral directing Memoria Brand Partners who combine to offer you a diverse choice of funeral packages that will suit the funeral service that your family feels is appropriate while being at a price you can feel comfortable with.”

Turning to the funeral directing businesses who belatedly entered the direct cremation market in a significant way; they have been playing catch up for a while. The funeral sector was slow to respond to the threat of the rise of direct cremation providers in general, and the well-funded Pure Cremation in particular. 

All funeral directors have always been able and willing to provide unattended cremations if a client wanted, even if this service wasn’t particularly promoted to the public. Perhaps there was a level of complacency, or a lack of realisation about the power of clever marketing among the large funeral providers. Perhaps the delay was through caution about providing direct cremations that clients might choose rather than the more profitable full funerals that formed the bulk of their business. 

No matter the reason for not reacting immediately, the largest funeral providers soon realised that they needed to respond to the new ‘nationwide’ direct cremation services. In 2016, Dignity introduced a separate online ‘trading style’ called Simplicity Cremations offering direct cremations, and Co-operative Funeralcare followed with their direct cremation package in 2017. 

In 2018, Funeral Partners acquired four funeral homes and two sub brands offering direct cremations, retaining one of those sub brands before trialling a direct cremation offering called Simply in three of its branches later that year. The following year, the company launched a revised ‘Simply Funerals’ website.

Other large funeral directing companies have set up separate online direct cremation trading names – Liberty Cremations offers you the ability to arrange a £1,145 direct cremation remotely, ‘rather than going in to a funeral home’, separating the online direct cremation service from the parent company CPJ Field & Co, a large, independently owned business with 37 funeral homes.

While the established funeral companies had been getting organised, the stand-alone company that now dominates the direct cremation market had been consolidating its advantage. Pure Cremation are possibly the best-known UK direct cremation provider, not least because of their extensive TV advertising campaigns and carefully cultivated public relations. 

Formed in 2015 by a husband-and-wife team who had previously run a funeral company in the Midlands, Pure Cremation started operating their service using an arrangement with Memoria crematoria, before building their own crematorium in Andover. The crematorium has large mortuary facilities to accommodate the volume of bodies delivered to them for cremation by their teams of staff and by funeral directors taking advantage of their low fees (as we noted in our blog post last week, Pure Cremation offer funeral directors across England and Wales a very low-cost cremation fee under a trade partnership, as well as directly marketing their full direct cremation service to the public.

Pure Cremation charge their trade partners £250 per cremation fee if the coffin is delivered to them and the ashes are collected, while for members of the public booking a direct cremation directly (or via a non-trade partner funeral director) at Charlton Park crematorium, the cremation fee is £450. A complete direct cremation booked via Pure Cremation themselves will cost ‘from £1,295’ (An additional fee is required for collections from non-hospital settings).

Their business strategy seems to be working; Pure Cremation was the subject of a speculative article by Sky News earlier this year postulating valuation of their company at over £400 million, while recent filings at Companies House indicate that the couple who created the company have now relocated to Monaco (a move requiring a deposit into a bank in Monaco of between €500,000 and €1 million from each applicant, unless the applicant is employed by a Monaco company, or is forming a company that will employ at least 10 citizens of Monaco).

So, the direct cremation provider landscape is, as we have seen, a significantly varied one. Faceless tech companies with fancy websites and no practical funeral experience jostle for position on the internet against diversifying crematoria companies and established funeral businesses, all taking advantage of the growing awareness of the possibility of an unattended funeral imprinted on the public consciousness, which is mainly courtesy of Pure Cremation’s ample advertising budget. 

Some of the companies involved are young and unproven, some are making a financial loss, some are making an absolute fortune. Some are experienced funeral professionals, others have no experience of the practical work involved and their business model reies on contracting this part of their service out to others, with behind-the-scenes agreements with funeral directors who facilitate the logistics, ‘trusted partners’ sending staff to collect people who have died and deliver them to the chosen crematorium, under whichever company’s name that the client has chosen. 

The very low costs advertised by some of these companies can surely only be facilitated by stripping back all  the costs involved, until just the essential services are provided – after all, there is very little margin in a total fee of £850, when all the elements are considered. Those sub-contractor funeral businesses carrying out the practical aspects of the service must be doing so on a shoestring.

We have heard some really alarming stories about poor standards of care; mass storage of bodies awaiting cremation in unsuitable facilities,  small funeral businesses with inadequate facilities carrying out sub-contracted services for a large direct cremation provider and failing to meet even the most basic of expectations of care of the people who have died.

When there is a race to the bottom on price, standards will inevitably slip somewhere along the line. Very unfortunate if it happens to be your relative who isn’t cared for the way that you would want – but then, how would you know? Once a person has been collected and taken away for a direct cremation, they have disappeared completely. 

Direct cremations are, effectively, a straightforward disposal service, a logistical problem to solve that requires labour and transport and the provision of storage and a coffin. Online advisors and telephone operators guide clients through the paperwork, while anonymous teams of staff do the collecting, encoffining and delivering. Sometimes, people who have died will be washed and dressed before being placed in their low-cost coffin, other times not. Cremated remains are scattered or returned to the client as required. 

The whole thing can be arranged without leaving your home, the ‘fuss’ of a funeral is neatly sidestepped and the dead person is lawfully disposed of for you. You are then ‘free to arrange a celebration of their life at a time to suit you.’ We wonder how many times this doesn’t happen.

As we said in the introduction, direct cremation is right for some people. In the Competition & Markets Authority Funerals Market Investigation Final Report 2021, the CMA notes that ‘direct cremation meets some specific needs: for some, a desire for a non-traditional funeral, with a service/celebration planned separately; for others, a low-cost alternative where no service is needed or wanted at all (for example, where there is no close family or it is a better reflection of the deceased’s values or wishes). Price does not therefore seem to be the only driver for choosing a direct cremation.’

The CMA continues ‘Despite large price differences between direct cremation and other funeral types, direct cremation accounts for a very small proportion of funerals and is expected to continue to be so in the next few years. Following the introduction of direct cremations at a price significantly below their other funeral packages, the proportion of customers who chose it was small: [5-10]% of Co-op’s customers in the months it was available, and [0-5]% of Dignity’s customers. We set out in Appendix I (paragraph 58) evidence that indicates direct cremations are expected to remain a small part of the market.’

But while it remains a small part of the market, it is a growing one. And that brings with it important questions that need to be asked, as we outlined at the start of this post.

And what about the effect on the environment of these national providers? As a comment on our blog post about the cost of cremation last week pointed out, the focus on centralised, non-attended funerals is extraordinarily bad for our carbon footprint. Every day, vans drive up and down the country to collect people who have died and deliver them to a crematorium to be cremated without ceremony. We don’t think this is a good thing at all when an unattended funeral could be organised locally, by a funeral director who is personally accountable.

Direct cremation that is chosen knowingly, after discussions with family members is one thing, direct cremation that is decided on without understanding the importance of bereaved people experiencing a funeral is another. We would urge anyone tempted to ‘save their families the expense’ or to avoid ‘all that stress’ of organising a funeral to think carefully before buying a pre-paid direct cremation for themselves. Your family may well be distraught at having to follow your wishes when all they want is to create a beautiful, low-cost farewell that will help them face the future without you.

For members of the public thinking about their own future funeral, talk with those close to you. Talk to your local funeral director. Do your research. Don’t fall for the manipulation of ‘looking after everyone’ or ‘putting your family first’ by taking the task of organising a funeral away from them. It is not what most people need in those awful days following the death of someone beloved. 

Funerals matter. We have them for a reason.

Oh, and finally, and just for the record, don’t believe the guff about David Bowie having a direct cremation of the kind touted in the marketing material and adverts we all see.

He didn’t. 

How much does cremation cost in 2022?

15 August 2022
Fran Hall
3 Comments
Categories: cremation, crematoria, funeral cost

With well over 3/4 of British funerals now culminating in cremation, and with the relentless promotion of direct cremation on mainstream TV channels, we thought it was about time to look at the cost of being cremated in 2022. 

The Competition and Markets Authority’s Funeral Market Investigation Order 2021 mandated that all crematoria must publish their prices, which has made this research possible (even if not easy!) – we are extremely grateful for this new transparency.

Some important provisos  before we start – for the purpose of this blog post, and to avoid completely drowning in numbers, we are only focusing on the cremation fees here, not the full price for a funeral. Once funeral director fees are added on, the total costs will, of course, be significantly higher. 

We have looked at the price charged for a standard adult cremation, with a ceremony at 11.00am or thereabouts, where varying prices are shown for different times of the day. 

We aren’t comparing the multiple different prices for direct cremations, or ‘attended direct cremations’, we’re simply looking at the standard cremation fees published by the crematoria companies.

There are lots of numbers and links, but we’ll try to make it easy to follow – we’ll break it up with some gorgeous photos by Rachel Wallace taken at the wonderful Mortlake Crematorium, run by a collective of four London Boroughs (and where cremation fees are among the lowest 10% in the country!) 

The first and most obvious finding is that there is an absolutely enormous disparity across the country. You could almost describe it as a postcode lottery. 

The tremendously useful league table from The Cremation Society of Great Britain (CMS) shows an astonishing range of fees; the 2021 fee for a single standard adult cremation ranged from £392 to £1,100,  a difference of £708. 

Citizens of Belfast have access to the lowest cremation fees in the United Kingdom, with the local authority run City of Belfast Crematorium currently charging residents of the city a very reasonable £408. But back across the Irish Sea, for those of us in the rest of the UK, things are very different.

The CMS league table tells us that there were 312 crematoria operating in 2021, and of these, (excluding Belfast), 90% of them charged more than £700, while the latest cremation statistics from the same source show that the average total cremation charge in the UK in January 2022 was £867.75.

The crematorium with the highest standard fee is the independently owned Parkgrove Crematorium in Angus, Scotland, where the fee for an adult cremation is £1,100.

Head south to Oxfordshire and a ceremony at a ‘premium time’ (12.00, 13.00 or 14.00) will cost you even more – £1,140 for a lunch time ceremony at either of the two Memoria run crematoria – North Oxfordshire Crematorium and South Oxfordshire Crematorium. 

Now, it’s an interesting thing that there are three crematoria serving Oxford and the surrounding area – all privately owned, the above two owned by Memoria, and a third, Oxford Crematorium, owned and run by Dignity PLC (now rebranded as The Crematorium and Memorial Group). A 60 minute ‘slot’ at any of these three crematoria will cost a minimum of £1,070 (at the Dignity crematorium), while the two Memoria crematoria both charge £1,090 for an 11am booking.

Down in the seaside town of Brighton, however, there are two crematoria, one local authority run, the other privately owned. Woodvale Crematorium is run by Brighton & Hove City Council, and charges £715 for a cremation, while half a mile away, Dignity operate The Downs Crematorium and somehow manages to undercut the local authority with a cremation fee of £678. A whopping discount of £392 compared with the Dignity price of £1,070 for a cremation in Oxford – or at nine of their other crematoria across the country.

Prices at the remaining Dignity crematoria (there are 46 in total) range between £675 at Stockport Crematorium (that’s a one-off, the lowest price charged by any crematorium in the group, and perhaps reflective of the fact that there are 13 other crematoria serving the Greater Manchester area) to £1,060, which curiously is the fee charged by both of the Dignity owned crematoria which serve the people of Norwich, Earlham Crematorium and St. Faiths Crematorium. 

No other crematoria are located in the city, so to find a lower cost cremation fee in the Norwich area you’d need to travel half an hour west to the privately owned Breckland Crematorium (£895), head 23 miles north to Cromer Crematorium, operated by the Westerleigh Group (£1,040), take a 50 mile round trip to the local authority run Great Yarmouth Crematorium (£895) or drive a similar distance to the Memoria crematorium Waveney Memorial Park (£945). 

Dignity aren’t the only company that appear to be sensitive to the pricing of nearby crematoria – over in Retford, in Nottinghamshire, a 11.00am cremation at Memoria’s Barnby Moor Crematorium is priced at £775,while the Westerleigh owned Babworth Crematorium, two and a half miles away, charges £825. 

These are among the lowest prices charged by either operator; all of Memoria’s other crematoria charge between £930 – £1,090, while Westerleigh has one crematorium charging less (Aylesbury Vale Crematorium at £699) and 35 other crematoria charging between £850 – £1,115. (The Westerleigh crematorium at Aylesbury Vale is just three miles from Bierton Crematorium which is operated by three local councils and charges a cremation fee of £700.)

It is clear that a large part of the cremation fee charged by crematoria is the hire fee for the ceremony space, as there are significantly discounted fees for early morning and unattended cremations – most crematoria charge between £350 – £500 for a direct cremation, but as the majority of people still choose to hold a ceremony, the disparity across the country in prices of the cremation fees that families are required to pay is shocking.

Setting aside the coincidence of (extraordinarily) similar fees to close competitors or sister crematoria in some locations, the range of prices charged by the same operators in different areas and the very significant difference between the lowest and highest fees around the country, the situation of crematorium fees is more concerning in the light of initiatives from two of the cremation companies:

Pure Cremation Ltd (they of the cutesy daytime TV adverts) operate Charlton Park Crematorium, which is where the cremations arranged under their nationwide direct cremation service are carried out. 

The crematorium can also be used by families not employing Pure Cremation, and prices range from £450 for a direct cremation to £900 for an hour in the ceremony room. 

So far, so par for the course. Until you see the advertisements placed by Pure Cremation in the trade magazines for the funeral sector.

What the company is offering to funeral directors that partner with them is a preferential cremation fee  – £250 where the funeral director delivers the coffin to Charlswood Park, and collects the cremated remains by appointment,  £350 where the Pure Cremation team collect the coffin from the funeral home and return the cremated remains by hand.

The copy on their website page for partners states ‘Some people only want the simplest direct cremation at the lowest possible cost but would prefer to be looked after by a local firm. Our low cremation fees mean that you can say “Yes” to serving these families at a price that they feel good about… yet still achieves a healthy margin for you.’

This sounds excellent from a client’s point of view; a local funeral director service, an efficient direct cremation and the cremated remains returned to them. All at the lowest possible price (assuming that the saving on the cremation fee is passed on by the funeral company concerned, of course).

It also makes it clear that the actual cost of cremating an adult is less than £250.

Otherwise, Pure Cremations wouldn’t be offering this service at this price.

Memoria appear to have been similarly struck by inspiration at the idea of partnering with funeral directors, although they have a slightly different take on it. They are also offering discounted cremation fees to select funeral directors – £300 in this case for direct cremations, £400 for small, attended funeral ceremonies before 11.00am.

A letter from former owner and current Group CEO, Howard Hodgson, landed on the doormats of funeral directors recently, notifying them of an upcoming Memoria TV advertising campaign promoting ‘affordable, local and attended cremation funeral services as an alternative to direct cremation’, and inviting them to become a Memoria Brand Partner.

According to the FAQ’s on the website, a Memoria Brand Partner is ‘a funeral director who works exclusively with Memoria to offer the attended local funeral service – the Personal Funeral Service – to bereaved families as an alternative to Direct Cremation. Memoria is also to be their exclusive provider of their direct cremations.’

Brand Partners will benefit from ‘preferential cremation fees for both Direct Cremation (£300) and the Personal Funeral Service (£400)’ as well as branded marketing material and the backing of Memoria TV and digital advertising at no cost to their business.

Somewhat less appealing to most funeral directors, perhaps, is the fact that Memoria will, as part of the contractual arrangement required in exchange for the preferential cremation fees, set the total price of the Direct Cremation and Personal Funeral Service – £990 and £1,395 respectively. 

It seems to us that this initiative by Memoria is not just an attempt to push back at the rise of direct cremation by promoting low cost, attended funerals, but it is also an attempt to enlist sufficient funeral directors to carry out the logistics of the ‘arranging’ elements of a funeral by enticing them to sign up as exclusive partners with discounted cremation fees. (Something similar was attempted by Memoria’s sister company, Low Cost Funerals, now rebranded as Affordable Funerals and listed at Companies House with the same directors as Memoria. Affordable Funerals already offer Direct Cremations and Personal Funeral Services at the same prices as those that we’ll see advertised by Memoria and their partners over the coming months).

The prices charged to non-affiliated funeral directors for direct cremations are listed as £450 at each of the Memoria crematoria, 50% higher than the £300 fee that Brand Partners will be charged for each cremation. 

For small funeral directors, this is a significant amount to offset as part of their total package price. It could render it impossible for non-affiliated funeral directors to compete in price against companies who sign up as a Memoria Brand Partner – the former would have to provide all the services involved in organising a cremation for £540 after paying the £450 cremation fee, while the Brand Partner would have £690 left to cover the costs of overheads, staff, vehicles, coffin supply, insurance and so forth. 

Effectively, Memoria’s initiative could make it impossible for small funeral businesses to offer direct cremations at a competitive rate in areas where there are no other crematoria available and where other funeral directors are partnering with Memoria and receiving discounted cremation fees. If this happens, then the ultimate loser will be the bereaved people whose choices will have been diminished.

So, what have we learned from this long (and possibly quite boring) deep dive into cremation fees? Mainly the following:

  • That private companies are doing what they are supposed to do, i.e., making money.
  • That an individual cremation can be carried out for under £250, with the company providing the service still making money from it.
  • And that bereaved families are being charged an extraordinarily huge amount of money for the room hire for their funeral ceremonies. More than £800 an hour in some cases!

Armed with this knowledge, what can the public do?

We recommend – as always – asking a lot of questions before committing yourself to making funeral arrangements with any company. Think about what matters to you, make a list of things that you want to know, then call funeral directors and ask them. 

If you are planning to have a funeral ceremony prior to cremation, you could explore the possibility of hiring a venue for the ceremony then arranging for the cremation to take place separately, perhaps early the following day at a reduced rate. 

You may find that you can hire a village hall for the whole day for a ceremony and a reception for less than the cost of a 40-minute ceremony in a crematorium chapel. Or your local pub might be willing to let you book it for the day and have a ceremony in the garden. Maybe you or a relative have space to hold a ceremony at home? You do not need to be confined to holding a ceremony at a crematorium. Once you begin to think of alternative places and spaces, all kinds of possibilities may occur to you.

You could enquire about other crematoria rather than the one closest to you – do a Google search for ‘crematorium in *your area’. Look at the crematoria websites, they all list prices for both funeral services and for direct cremations, and many will show different fees for different times of the day. Often, local authority owned and run crematoria will charge less than the privately owned ones, although not always.

All funeral directors are required to list the fees of their local crematoria on their Standardised Price List which must be shown on their website, so you may be able to get an idea of costs in your area by checking these, but then double check with the crematorium itself in case fees have changed recently.

You may be considering a direct cremation? If so, be particularly wary of companies advertising themselves as direct cremation providers online. 

We will be writing about this subject in detail in a dedicated blog post in the coming weeks, but for now we can summarise by recommending you always approach a company with a physical presence, a proper funeral director rather than an internet-based provider. Ask them exactly where the cremation will take place, and when. Ask for a breakdown of their advertised ‘direct cremation’ fee. Ask them if they and their staff will take the coffin to the crematorium, or if this part of their service is subcontracted. Ask them if any part of their service is subcontracted, and if so, to whom.

Remember, you are the client. You are paying for a service, and you have every right to know what you are paying for.

What to wear to a funeral

9 August 2022
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: Etiquette, Funeral advice, Funerals, The future of funerals

Recent photographs of the former President Trump and his family solemnly lining the steps of the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer in New York City, watching Ivana Trump’s $125,000 ‘golden hued casket’ as it was carried to the waiting hearse offer us absolute visual confirmation of what the Western world deems to be appropriate ‘attire’ at a funeral. 

It’s not clear whether the wall-to-wall sea of black and navy suits looked quite so appropriate as Ivana’s casket was lowered into the solitary grave by the first tee at Trump’s Bedminster Golf Club, apparently endowing Trump with a ‘huge tax break’ by effectively turning the golf club into a cemetery in the process. 

Anyway. We were recently struck by the advice offered by the big players in the UK funeral sector telling people what they should wear to a funeral. On their websites. With what appears to be all due solemnity. As if there’s a public service being offered by guiding people towards an important social imperative of funeral etiquette. 

Firstly, we wondered exactly who would be looking to the likes of Dignity Funerals, Co-operative Funeralcare and Funeral Partners for guidance?

Check with the family of the person who has died, by all means. If the family want a particular dress code or theme to a funeral, then you can be sure that this will be communicated to guests. If in doubt, ask a family member, or the celebrant, or the funeral arranger involved. It is, we would suggest, unlikely that many people would log on to a corporate funeral director’s website for advice.

There can’t be many adults in the country who aren’t able to decide for themselves what to wear to any given event, and goodness knows there are enough examples of funerals on TV, on the news, in films – and just in general life – to indicate what people at funerals usually wear. For the big players to bestow their learned advice on the public seems both paternalistic and patronising, and, we would suggest, not a little self-interested. 

There is a vested interest for the largest funeral companies to ensure that in 2022, funerals continue to look the same as they did in 1922; the big black shiny cars, the outdated Victorian garb of the funeral director complete with hat and waistcoat identifiable as the master of ceremonies, the sombre men in black jackets and grey striped trousers silently shouldering a coffin bedecked with a ‘floral tribute’ – and assembled ranks of mourners in black clothing completing this picture of how a funeral ‘should’ look.

For some families, a traditional look to a funeral is absolutely what they want, and we are not in any way criticising this. There are all sorts of reasons for preference at a funeral, we just don’t think that funeral directors’ guides to etiquette should be arbiters of taste. That’s the role for the family involved.

For other families, all that is needed is an awareness that there is no right or wrong – freed from the expectations of others, many people might choose a very different look to the funeral ceremony they are organising. A good funeral director will support and encourage this, but unfortunately, many families who have engaged a funeral company that is part of a large chain might not experience a similar freedom.

The big players in the funeral industry aren’t interested in creativity or self-expression at a funeral. A funeral conductor with a colourful pocket handkerchief or bearers in different colour ties or the offer of an ‘alternative hearse’ – this is about the extent of what the large corporates can offer clients, while everything else slots in to ‘service as usual’.

Guests might be invited to wear something colourful if the person who died had a favourite colour, but for the vast, vast majority of funerals there appears to still be an expectation that mourners will arrive wearing traditional ‘respectful’ formal black clothes. And while this might be a cultural norm for some, and very much expected in some communities, in an increasingly secular society, changes are happening.

Secondly, the advice from the big players in funeralworld reads as if they have all tried to edit and individualise a single original archaic document. 

Dignity Funerals sternly admonish: 

“Do not wear any of the following to a funeral:

  • Revealing or suggestive clothing
  • Trainers or flip flops
  • Printed t-shirts
  • Jeans
  • Caps
  • Colourful ties
  • Excessive amounts of jewellery”

Co-operative Funeralcare are a little more generous but have similar warnings:

“If the family have requested bright colours or a particular theme, then of course this is fine, but in most cases it’s best to avoid:

  • Jeans
  • Short sleeved shirts
  • Revealing clothing
  • Flip flops or trainers
  • Football shirts/sportswear
  • Caps
  • T shirts
  • Clothing with logos or branding
  • Flashy jewellery”

Funeral Partners are more subtle, including detailed advice for women, men, children and toddlers (!) in a heavily loaded piece with lots of emphasis on ‘smart’ and recommendations to avoid ‘jeans, revealing clothing, flashy jewellery and hats’ (for women), and ‘jeans, short-sleeved shirts, trainers and caps/beanies’ for men.

It seems that the three main funeral providers in the UK are united in their approach to ensuring that gatherings of mourners at funerals are all dressed ‘appropriately’ by issuing their opinions so strongly:

Don’t, whatever you do, wear jeans to a funeral. Or a cap. Or the peculiarly judged ‘flashy jewellery’. Presumably, according to this guidance, if you were foolish or rebellious enough to do so, something terrible would happen. Everyone would know you were deliberately showing ‘disrespect’ to the person who has died, or their family. You would upset someone. You’d be shown up for the social outcast you obviously are. Didn’t you read the guide to funeral etiquette on the funeral director’s helpful website? Don’t you understand what is APPROPRIATE??? 

The funeral companies sprinkle references to what is ‘appropriate’ throughout their ‘what to wear’ guides, ladling on a heavy sense of obligation to get it right. We would respectfully ask, who gets to decide what is appropriate or not? Ever? Definitely not the people dressed up like Goth tribute acts with top hats, fob watches and canes, or their colleagues who sit in their ‘funeral homes’ ‘attired’ like bank clerks under the company uniform code enforced by their managers.

We view these guides with a similar level of weariness as we have for the stock photos of funerals regularly used to illustrate press articles – they’re just out of date and irrelevant. And unnecessary. They serve only to shore up the funeral directors’ over inflated sense of their own importance, setting themselves as the advice-bestowing arbiters of taste. 

They reflect funerals as they were, not how they are. They don’t reflect the changing face of funerals, the diversity of our society, the emergence of awareness that funerals are whatever people want them to be. The begrudging references to ‘it’s best to check the wishes of the bereaved family’ heavily imply that anything other than following the etiquette outlined is an aberration, an exception to the traditional rules, which are so much more comfortable and preferable, so much more ‘appropriate’. 

And infuriatingly, as well as being outdated, these guides are poorly written and pompous in tone – see some examples below: 

“If you are unsure of what to wear, it’s important to be respectful to the deceased.”  (what does this even mean??)

“By wearing casual clothes, you could be unintentionally sending the message that you don’t care about the person who has died” 

“Black clothing isn’t always compulsory for women but it is best to wear a dark coloured skirt, dress or pair of trousers”.

The Funeral Partners website is the only one of the three to acknowledge that some cultures differ in what people are expected to wear to a funeral, noting that wearing black is not considered appropriate (there’s that word again) at a Hindu funeral or a Sikh funeral. 

Whoever wrote this particular piece then goes on to helpfully describe ‘some other popular colours worn worldwide’, telling us that ‘in South Africa, red is sometimes worn as a colour of mourning’, that in Thailand ‘purple represents sorrow and is often worn by widows during the mourning period’ and, perhaps the most irrelevant inclusion, ‘in Papua New Guinea a widow applies a stone-coloured clay to their skin while mourning their husband.’  All very interesting, but of absolutely no help to a reader wondering whether they are ok to wear their navy suit to go to their neighbour’s funeral in Clacton. It’s almost as if someone got overexcited and embellished their boring ‘wear black to a funeral’ article with some gems from Wikipedia. 

We think that it’s ridiculous, in this day and age, to be telling people what ‘etiquette’ dictates that they should be wearing to any event. ‘Etiquette’ is defined as ‘the social set of rules that control accepted behaviour in particular social groups or social situations’ – an invisible ‘code of conduct’ that serves to ensure people feel either part of a group or an excluded other who doesn’t conform. 

Etiquette is associated with the constructs of the British social class system, the status hierarchy of the ‘genteel’ upper classes and the ‘coarse’ lower classes, reflecting and encapsulating the conventional norms of the former. In the mid 18th century, the adoption of etiquette was a self-conscious process for acquiring the conventions of politeness and the normative behaviours (charm, manners, demeanour) which symbolically identified the person as a genteel member of the upper class.

In order to identify with the social élite, the upwardly mobile middle class and the bourgeoisie adopted the behaviours and the artistic preferences of the upper class. To that end, socially ambitious people of the middle classes occupied themselves with learning, knowing, and practising the rules of social etiquette, adopting mannerisms, vocabulary – and dress. This is where the roots of the bizarre ‘Guides to Funeral Etiquette’ originate from.

We would suggest that, almost 300 years on, as British society undergoes enormous change and adaptation, embracing diversity and difference, as the control of the church diminishes and the deference to the social constructs of the upper class fades away, there is no place for out-dated aping of the manners and foibles of the richest in society. 

Funerals of the rich and famous follow a set pattern, based on historic traditions and expected patterns, and these serve to reinforce the unspoken class system we all live amidst. Harking back to Victorian foppery in the spectacle of the public display of mourning serves nobody well. Apart from the companies who have invested millions of pounds in providing the foppery props, of course. 

Wear what you like to a funeral. It’s your presence that matters, not whether you are wearing jeans and flipflops and your flashiest jewellery rather than deepest black crepe and a veil. The person who has died won’t care. And if you meant something to that person, then their family won’t care either. They’ll just be glad to have you there. 

Also, you might have a small sense of satisfaction at not being dressed like a member of the Trump family. 

Funeral plans – a bonfire of vanities

4 August 2022
Fran Hall
1 Comment
Categories: funeral plans

If you or a member of your family have taken out a pre-paid funeral plan, read on. Important information below!

 

On Friday last week, the crowded funeral plan landscape suddenly became a little less bustling. Quite a lot less, actually.

 

On 29th July 2022, the  Financial Conduct Authority took on the regulation of the funeral plan market, and with immediate effect, almost two thirds of funeral plan providers have been refused permission to sell new plans, leaving just 26 funeral plan providers that will be authorised by the FCA.

 

There were, until 29th July, around 70 companies selling funeral plans in the UK. Some large, with enormous amounts of money invested, some small. All were required to apply to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for authorisation after the government legislated in January 2021 to bring pre-paid funeral plans into FCA regulation.

 

The market had been, until last week, completely unregulated, and over the years there have been various high-profile collapses of funeral plan providers, leaving customers who thought that their funerals were organised and paid for in the distressing position of finding out their money had been lost, and that there was absolutely no redress. 

The most recent company to go into liquidation is Unique Funeral Plans, which announced on 22nd July that its 3,000 customers would not receive refunds, nor would their funeral plans be transferred to alternative providers. The previous week, on 14th July, Not for Profit Funeral Plans Ltd was placed into liquidation with all funeral plans terminated with immediate effect.

This came just weeks after approximately 45,000 people who had purchased a funeral plan from Safe Hands Funeral Plans were told they could expect to receive back just 10% of the plan value by administrators, after that company collapsed into administration in March. 

Temporarily, Dignity Funerals Ltd has agreed to fulfil all funerals of Safe Hands funeral plan holders for six months from 11th May 2022, and they are contacting all plan holders offering (for additional contributions) a replacement funeral plan from Dignity, see details here.

Curiously, at the same time, Dignity have paused their sale of funeral plans, quite a decision for a company that usually sells around 1,000 plans a week!!

Anyway, we digress. 

13 further plan providers that applied for FCA authorisation have not been authorised. These companies are permitted to continue administering existing funeral plans until 31st October, but they are prohibited from selling any new plans. By 31st October, they must transfer their plans to authorised firms or refund their customers. They are permitted to continue receiving instalment payments, if you already have a plan with them, and they should be contacting you to let you know what’s happening. Make sure you respond to any communication you receive where required. 

Plans offered by these 13 companies are not covered by FCA regulation, meaning there is no protection by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) until they are transferred to authorised providers.

You can see the full FCA list here, showing the 26 companies that the FCA is authorising, the 13 companies that are permitted to continue administering plans and a non-exhaustive list of 10 companies that must not sell or administer plans. 

It is estimated that there are almost two million people in the UK who have taken out a funeral plan to cover the costs of their funeral, and 87% of this market (around 1.6 million plans) are provided by the 26 providers now authorised by the FCA, meaning that customers will now have access to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, so their money is protected if their provider fails. 

Planholders with authorised companies can also make a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service even if the issue they are complaining about happened before July 2022 if the firm was registered with the Funeral Planning Authority (FPA) at the time the issue occurred.

The FCA will monitor adherence to the new regulations that have come into force, which include:

  • A ban on cold calling.
  • A ban on commission payments to intermediaries, such as funeral directors.
  • A requirement for a funeral plan to deliver a funeral unless the customer dies within two years of taking out the plan, in which case a full refund will be offered.

Finally, it seems, purchasers of pre-paid funeral plans can have confidence that their chosen provider is both reputable and reliable, and that their money will be safe.

Here at the GFG we have a pretty jaded view of the entire principle of encouraging people to decide and pay for their funerals in advance, and we’ve written extensively about our misgivings. 

We have argued that advance payment ‘for peace of mind’, as it’s advertised, is actually entering into an expensive transaction that often leaves bereaved families without choice or control of an event that is supposed to be for them, not for the person who has died. Read this blog post from 2019 which shows just how unsatisfactory – and financially unbeneficial – a funeral plan can be.

We understand that many people worry about the costs of funerals, and that, for some, paying for their funeral arrangements in advance is an attractive prospect, particularly with the escalation in funeral costs that continue relentlessly year on year. Securing funeral services at today’s price seems both sensible and responsible, particularly for the prudent generation reaching their 80’s and 90’s, something that has not gone unnoticed by the marketing teams of funeral planning companies.

Until now, people purchasing pre-paid funeral plans have had to hope that their chosen plan provider was a secure and responsible entity, and that the ‘stress and worry of planning a funeral’ was all taken care of with the stroke of a pen on their cheque as they sent the forms back in the pre-paid envelope helpfully provided. There was, though, no guarantee of this.

Finally, with the oversight of the FCA now in place, people who want to settle their funeral arrangements in advance will be able to have confidence that their money is safe and that their decisions about their funeral will be carried out as they wish. 

This FCA safety net has been needed for a very long time, and we are relieved that it is now in place.

St. Margaret’s Hospice Funerals. It’s over.

27 July 2022
Fran Hall
1 Comment
Categories: Hospice Funerals

It gives us no pleasure at all to report that the ill-fated venture embarked on by the CEO of St. Margaret’s Hospice in Somerset back in 2017 has come to an end. A statement on the website was posted today, and today’s edition of the Somerset County Gazette confirmed an email that we received this morning telling us that the funeral business had closed.

Back in November 2017, when we first heard about the plans for a well loved and respected hospice to go into partnership with a company operating crematoria around the UK and offer a franchise scheme for other hospices to do the same, we sounded the alarm in a post on this blog.

We followed this up the next month with a letter that we sent to the board of trustees of every single hospice in the UK advising them against following St. Margaret’s Hospice into what we considered to be a foolish and costly venture – we published the letter here. We were supported by many funeral directors from across the country who shared our concerns and added their names to the letter.

Further posts on the GFG blog on the same topic from December 2017 can be seen here, here and here. We were taking it very seriously indeed, as you can see. The use of funds donated to a hospice to set up a funeral directing business seemed to us to be foolhardy in the extreme, and the franchise idea was a folly that we hoped no other hospice would be tempted to embark on.

Undaunted, St. Margaret’s Hospice went ahead with their plans, and on 22nd January 2018 they opened the doors of their first branch in Taunton – we wrote about it here and shared the results of our survey , evidencing that the vast majority of donors to a hospice would not be happy for their donations to be used to set up and run a funeral franchise. These findings were referenced in a BBC Points West programme that covered the controversial closure of St. Margaret’s in-patient hospice ward in Yeovil.

In August 2019, we wrote another post with updates about the venture, including the disappearance of Low Cost Funerals as a partner with the hospice. St. Margaret’s were going it alone.

Then it all went quiet. Other things took priority as the whole world was affected by the pandemic. The success or failure of the hospice funeral venture in Somerset was not on our radar until today’s email arrived.

Looking back, and reading back through our public expressions of concern, it is still astonishing to consider the naivety – or foolishness – of the trustees who supported the idea of a hospice investing funds into offering funerals to its patients and the wider community, in a town where there were plenty of funeral directors already. It is difficult to understand the business case that persuaded them. And it is difficult to understand why the many, many warnings were not heeded.

The hospice apparently assured anyone who questioned them about the ethics of offering patients a funeral provided by their trading subsidiary that they wouldn’t be ‘pushing’ the funeral service at patients and families’, so it couldn’t be that patients would be encouraged to choose the hospice funeral service. It must have simply been confidence in the idea that local people would be attracted by the idea of supporting the hospice through electing to use the funeral service they operated. A risky basis for investing such a considerable amount of donated funds, as we pointed out at the time.

(Reading Ms Lee’s comments to the Somerset County Gazette today, one could be forgiven for wondering quite what she means by this statement ‘Mrs Lee added: “More recently, a change in regulations has also limited how we talk to patients and their families, and because this venture has not realised a financial return for the charity, it is now necessary to close our funeral business”. How exactly were patients being talked to about the funeral business?

St. Margaret’s Hospice most recent trustee report (dated November 2021) states that the decision was taken to “impair the intercompany balance that the funeral business owes to the Hospice. At this moment in time the Board cannot say with certainty that this balance will be recovered, there are too many unknowns in the future projections for the funeral business. The Trustees have therefore recognised a £508,000 impairment provision in the accounts to reflect this uncertainty”.

The report goes on to state; “We are proud of the decision we took to enter the funeral marketplace and saw this as a strategic and natural extension of the services that the hospice provides, as well as an opportunity to diversify and generate a new and sustainable income stream for the charity. Our aim was to disrupt the marketplace, challenge funeral poverty by encouraging more transparent and fair pricing, and provide our community with alternative options, which we have achieved. The financial return has not yet been achieved, but a new pricing and marketing strategy is being implemented with the aim to do just that.”

And yet, here we are. 

Exactly where we and so many others predicted we would be. Hundreds of thousands of pounds spent, a charity shop specializing in baby and children’s items closed to convert into a funeral home, irreparable damage done to the reputation of a much -loved hospice and, presumably, several local people losing their jobs.

It’s hard to find out how much money from legacies and fund raising has been wasted on this foolhardy venture, Companies House shows the most recent accounts for St. Margaret’s Funerals Ltd. (Company No 10985626) as at 31st March 2021 with a deficit of £427,946. The accounts for Hospice Funerals LLP(Company No OC419616) as at 31st March 2021 show a deficit of £328,348, while there are no current accounts for Hospice Funerals Trading Ltd (Company No10953084), the second company in the LLP with St. Margaret’s Hospice Funerals. 

Interested parties – of which there are likely to be many – will have to wait until the trustees’ report from St. Margaret’s Hospice reveals the extent of the losses.

In the meantime, we are very sorry that we were right. 

If only someone had listened.