The future of funerals

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.”

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 Photography

23 November 2021
Fran Hall
5 Comments
Categories: funeral photography, Progressive funeral directors, The future of funerals

Funeral photographer Rachel Wallace 

(Photo credit Louise Winter)

 

On Sunday 22nd November 2021, something magical happened.

 

As the sun rose, Natasha Bradshaw, the inspirational superintendent of Mortlake Crematorium opened the gates to Mortlake’s beautiful grounds, and a trickle of people started to arrive for a  day that would be unlike anything that has ever been done before.

 

People carrying suitcases of changes of clothes arrived in Richmond from all across the south of England, ready to attend a series of staged funeral ceremonies. They were our extras, the mourners for seven fictional individuals whose funerals were taking place as part of the GFG’s Inspirational Funerals photoshoot.

 

The incredible amount of preparation that had gone into the day was evident, as the ceremonies began and lead funeral photographer Rachel Wallace of Farewell Photography and our indispensable second photographer Tracey Anderson started a long day’s work.

 

Funeral directors and celebrants stepped into their roles as if the funerals were real, hearses came and went, rapid costume changes meant black clad mourners reappeared wearing leopard-print outfits and bright coats, coffins were carried, flowers were placed, candles lit and blown out and lit again, beautiful orders of service were handed out and collected, music played, eulogies were read, people cried and laughed and danced and drank mugs of tea, children and dogs ran around and got under everyone’s feet, people watched via webcasts from afar – and everything was captured by the cameras.

 

The ceremonies ran like clockwork throughout the day, under the expert eye of event producer Debbie Malynn, finishing with the welcome words ‘It’s a wrap’ as the light faded and the last images were caught by the lenses. Rachel and Tracey gathered up their equipment, and Natasha and the lovely Mortlake staff tidied up the detritus of the day ready for the real funerals that would take place a few hours later – we didn’t get names, but thank you so much for clearing up after us!!

 

What was this all about, this extraordinary day of role play and expensive props? Why did we draw on the incredible generosity of all of the volunteers who gave up their day to be part of it?

 

It was because we want to show the world how beautiful and inspirational funerals can be, by creating – and then sharing – photographs that can be used by anyone.

 

The gallery of images from Sunday will be made available free of charge to anyone who wants them – for articles, websites, blog posts or social media, for brochures and literature, wherever and however these images are needed, they can be used.

 

We want to change the visual vocabulary about funerals so that everyone everywhere can see just how extraordinary and meaningful a funeral can be.

 

We know how important this is. Currently, stock photos of funerals all reinforce the narrative of sombre faced men in black carrying on their shoulders traditional (MDF) coffins dressed with coffin sprays. Just google images of funerals and you’ll see what we mean.

 

Without changing the visual lexicon, we won’t change the landscape of funerals. No matter how much we want people everywhere to think and talk about funerals, the general psyche is reluctant to do so until it’s absolutely necessary, and by then it’s too late, the social pressure is significant to conform with ‘what everyone else does’.

 

It’s time to change what people see, on as grand a scale as possible. Using pictures that give subconscious messages of ‘all of this is ok’.

 

This was our purpose in putting out a call for support in the Good Funeral Guild – and what an amazing response we had.

 

We want to thank everyone who participated, it couldn’t have happened without the phenomenal goodwill and generosity of everyone involved. You are all complete stars, and you have been part of something that will impact people you will never know or meet.

 

We need to say a particular thank you to the fabulous funeral directors and celebrants who made the funerals so real:

 

Firstly, the lovely Michael Tiney of Southall Funeral Service, whose immaculate cars were there at the crack of dawn for June’s ceremony and whose florist provided her flowers. Thanks to Becky Lee Wale, Daisy Chain Celebrant, who officiated as June’s celebrant. June’s beautiful coffin came from Somerset Willow.

 

Our second funeral for Alma was facilitated by the equally lovely Jo Williamson from Albany Funerals in Kent, with Angela Morgan officiating. The fabulous leopard print hearse was supplied by Green’s Carriage Masters (Jo generously covered the cost of the hire) and Alma’s coffin was created by Coffin Club North London.

 

The third funeral was for Sam, with more lovely funeral directors, Jacqui and Nick Taimtarha of  White Rose Modern Funerals,  Hannah Jackson McCamley (Hannah the Celebrant) leading the ceremony, and a beautiful woollen Natural Legacy coffin from Hainsworth Coffins.

 

The fourth funeral, for Maurice, had the awesome Lucy Coulbert from The Individual Funeral Company rocking up in her LandRover hearse and following car, and a stunning shroud provided by Yuli Somme from Bellacouche. Thanks also to David Holmes of Holmes and Family Funeral Directors for sourcing and bringing a beautiful hand drawn bier which Maurice’s shroud rested on for his outdoor ceremony. The celebrant for Maurice was the wonderful Rosalie Kuyvenhoven of Rituals Today.

 

Rosalie also co-ordinated the last three funerals for Noah, Ariella and May; in a completely ground-breaking part of the day, and with guidance from Natasha who has much experience of looking after baby and children’s funeral ceremonies, we photographed three of these to offer bereaved parents some beautiful sensitive imagery that could help them to begin to think about these most difficult of ceremonies.

 

Rosalie worked closely with Jo Shears from Poetic Endings on these special funerals, with coffins supplied by J. C. Atkinsons and a Swan Wing Cocoon from Bellacouche.

 

We also owe thanks to Suzie White for supplying us with stunning orders of service for the ceremonies – and for also stepping in, alongside her husband, to play particularly difficult roles for the camera.

 

Last of all, thanks to Jane, Isabel and Liv, current GFG directors, and Louise Winter, former Editor of the GFG, for their part in creating this incredible day.

 

This was a collective, tremendously generous effort by a multitude of people – not just those named in this blog post, but all of the other friends and family of members of the Good Funeral Guild who came along and played a part in a day that will change the face of funerals.

 

When the photos appear, you will all see just how worthwhile it was.

 

Thank you everyone.

 

Standardised price lists for all

11 October 2021
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: CMA Market Investigation, funeral cost, The future of funerals

 

Regular readers of the GFG blog will know that we have been calling for transparency in the funeral sector for well over a decade.

Last month, on 16th September, a seismic shift finally occurred when the Competition and Markets Authority’s Funerals Market Investigation Order 2021 finally came into effect.

All funeral directors in the UK are now required to comply with the Order, which, among other things, requires funeral directors to display price information in a clear and prominent manner, outside their premises, inside their premises and on their websites.

The CMA have specified exactly how information must be presented, with a Standardised Price List (SPL) which must follow the layout and wording supplied by them, an Additional Options Price List and a third price list showing information provided local crematorium operators.

In addition, funeral businesses must also similarly display their Terms of Business and Disclosure of Interests, including stating the ultimate owner of the business.

At last, people looking for a funeral director to help them organise a funeral will be able to compare prices between different funeral directors with ease – at the top of the Standardised Price List there is a total figure for the funeral director’s charges for their services for an attended funeral, below which is breakdown of how this total is arrived at.

The costs for an unattended funeral must also be displayed, and typical figures for burial and cremation fees must also be shown.

It is now, in theory at least, straightforward to compare funeral directors on the prices they charge, which will help people to understand the likely fees that they will be asked to pay – a hugely welcome development after years of opacity and confusion in how prices are displayed by varying businesses.

What we need to see now – and what the CMA will be monitoring – is total compliance from all funeral directors. Seven days after the Order came into effect, a disturbing number of companies seem not to have understood that this new situation is mandatory – we noted a number of well-established and prominent businesses who do not have a Standardised Price List on their website this weekend, while other premises appear to think displaying an A4 size poster at floor level in their window is complying with the Order.

It is incumbent on the funeral trade associations, head offices of large corporate companies and all independent funeral directors to ensure that members and branches are all compliant with the Order.

There is absolutely no excuse for not doing so, and there will be penalties incurred by those funeral directors who continue to fail to provide the information required.

Incidentally, we would add that it is also incumbent on the trade associations to make sure their own funeral houses are in order before using the CMA’s stipulations to attempt to hold businesses outside of their jurisdiction to account – and offering membership as protection.

The Good Funeral Guide have required all our Recommended funeral directors have their prices online for years, so, even though it has been onerous for firms who have always been transparent to follow requirements imposed because of the failure of the sector to be open about prices and ownership, we warmly welcome the CMA’s intervention.

It is regretful that this has been necessary. It is regretful that there still appear to be companies that don’t feel bereaved people deserve the courtesy of knowing what prices will be charged before they start making arrangements for a funeral. It is more than regretful, in fact, it is shameful.

If you come across funeral directors who aren’t displaying the mandatory documents, or if you happen upon a funeral director website that doesn’t have the Standardised Price List just one click away from the home page, do please let the CMA know, in confidence if you prefer. They are keen to hear about companies who are not complying.

The CMA Funerals Team can be contacted on funerals@cma.gov.uk

The Competition and Markets Authority’s Funeral Market Report – update

29 April 2021
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: CMA Market Investigation, Regulation of the funeral industry, The future of funerals

 

“Now is not the time”

On April 7th a document published by the Ministry of Justice quietly appeared in the public domain.

It was the government’s ‘Response to the Competition and Markets Authority’s Funeral Market Report’, and it does not make for good reading for anyone who believes that the funeral sector needs to be regulated. Or for the 69% of those who responded to the CMA’s survey who assume it already is.

If, like us, you have been following the progress of the CMA, from the launch of their market study into the funeral market in 2018, you will have seen the case for regulation gradually being developed. After years of painstaking and in-depth work by the team involved, the Final Report, published in December 2020, outlined the serious concerns that the CMA has about the funeral sector. We wrote about it in our blog post in January.

Despite the pandemic having severely restricted the CMA in fully developing all of the remedies that may otherwise have been pursued, the Final Report proposed a number of ‘sunlight’ remedies, intended to improve transparency of pricing and focus on the hidden ‘back of house’ practices in the funeral sector.

In addition, the CMA made one recommendation to government – that:

“The UK government, and the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland and Wales, should establish in England, Northern Ireland and Wales an inspection and registration regime to monitor the quality of funeral director services, as a first step to the establishment of a broader regulatory regime for funeral services in these nations (Scotland already has a similar regime).”

The government has had a think about this, and after a couple of weeks, it told us its decision.

It said no.

While agreeing in principle to a form of regulation and inspection and stating that it believes that ‘such a move in the long term would assist in achieving the overall objective of an improved customer experience’, the government then goes on to make clear it has little appetite to ‘improve customer experience’ in such a way any time soon – now is, apparently, ‘not the time to move to wholescale regulation’.

Instead, the response goes on to outline the next steps that the government is willing to take. Which are not exactly onerous.

Apparently, they will:

  • ‘Work collaboratively with the sector and user groups to develop an agreed set of quality standards (such as a voluntary code of practice), as part of a co-regulatory model, that could be introduced in summer 2021, in parallel with the CMA’s work on price transparency, to achieve a quicker outcome for users of funeral director’s services
  • Support the sector in developing a system to encourage all funeral directors to follow these quality standards and enable users to raise points of concern through a more formalised mechanism than at present
  • Commit to evaluating and reviewing the effectiveness of this co-regulation model
  • Monitor the effectiveness and success of the Scottish regulatory system that has just launched (and which applies to organisations who provide services in Scotland but may be based in Scotland and / or England) after a year’

‘In the context of the ongoing pandemic,’ the government goes on, ‘we believe that this is both a proportionate and appropriate approach.’

Over on Twitter, the Quaker Social Action account noted how bitterly disappointed QSA are with the UK government’s response, “There has never been a more important time for robust action to safeguard bereaved people and ensure that the funerals market is working for consumers” they say.

A statement from Lindesey Mace, manager of the charity’s funeral costs helpline Down to Earth adds that the number of clients they supported doubled during the second peak of Covid-19 deaths between December 2020 and March 2021.

Lindesey continues, “We believe the UK government could, and should, commit far more to protect bereaved people, especially those affected by funeral poverty.”

We at the Good Funeral Guide are wholeheartedly in agreement with Quaker Social Action and share their frustration and disappointment at the government’s decision.

The position of the National Association of Funeral Directors, in contrast, is somewhat different to that of QSA – the NAFD has warmly welcomed the government response in an article on their website, saying:

“The NAFD looks forward to working closely with the Ministry of Justice to demonstrate that our revised inspections regime and comprehensive industry code of practice (The Funeral Director Code), which has been created in consultation with consumer bodies and representatives from across the sector through the work of the FSCSR, and our work to create the Independent Funeral Standards Organisation (IFSO), an independent body which will oversee standards monitoring, inspections and complaints, will provide Government with the assurance it needs that the funeral sector is committed to acting with transparency, high standards and in the interests of bereaved people.”

(The FSCSR is an initiative by Dignity PLC that began in 2018 and was quickly expanded to include other ‘stakeholders’ and an independent chair. The FSCSR is funded “through the funeral industry through the NAFD with additional financial support from Golden Charter, Funeral Zone and Ecclesiastical Planning Services.” We wrote about it in a blog post in 2019 here.)

The IFSO was set up by the NAFD as a ‘new regulator in a previously unregulated space’, according to the advertised role of chair of the board and was done so to ‘provide the Government with a viable solution to address the CMA’s (and our) concerns about the limitations of the current voluntary regulation of the funeral sector,’ as outlined in the article on the NAFD website.

So. In summary.

  1. The Competition and Markets Authority has recommended that government step in and regulate the funeral sector in order to protect and benefit bereaved people.
  2. Government has declined to follow this recommendation.
  3. The National Association of Funeral Directors (the trade association representing the interests of funeral directors) has set up and funded a ready-made ‘independent regulatory body’ as a solution.

We offer no comment on this generous action.

Conclusion

After years of hard work by the team at the CMA investigating the funeral sector, it is dispiriting and dismaying to see their recommendation to government being dismissed.

It feels like a missed opportunity, one that has been 20 years in coming since the Office of Fair Trading Report published in July 2001 called for more openness and transparency, warning that the funeral industry could be taking advantage of bereaved people.

We feel that in choosing not to follow the CMA’s recommendation for regulation, government are ignoring bereaved people and downplaying the vulnerability of bereaved people as consumers.

We would like to ask one simple question to government.

If now is not the time to move to wholescale regulation of the funeral sector, then when will be?

Postscript

While doing research for this article, it was fascinating to come across the new look ‘All Party Parliamentary Group for Funerals and Bereavement’.

It has a shiny new website, and has moved up in the world by including not just MPs, but also members of the Deceased Management Advisory Group  (DMAG) – a collective of organisations representing both funeral directors and those who manage, provide and work in cemeteries and crematoria. The DMAG was formed to address the challenges posed to the funeral sector by the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is a very interesting and new development.

In the past, we have approached the APPG for Funerals many times, requesting that the Good Funeral Guide be allowed to attend meetings with MPs to represent the views of bereaved people (referred to in the full title of the group) but in each instance we have been turned down – although, we were assured in the polite refusals from various Chairs over the years that occasionally guest speakers were invited and one day that invitation might come to us. It never did.

The NAFD historically has been the only outside organisation involved with this particular APPG  – indeed it is referred to by a former President of the NAFD as ‘the NAFD’s APPG’ in an article commemorating the bestowing of Honorary Membership on a colleague – ‘Nigel has been involved with the NAFD’s APPG on Funerals and Bereavement since its inception in 2002 and has worked with 6 different Chairs in that time. All of whom he has ensured have returned excellent value for the NAFD.’

In the past, the APPG for Funerals was the beneficiary of a secretariat funded by the NAFD, however, from a skim through the minutes of the new-look group, a new public affairs agency, JBP Associates appears to have taken over this role. The funding for their services is not apparent in the public register (see page 609, to save you ploughing through all 1,239 pages).

Anyway, we digress. The new ‘APPG for Funerals and Bereavement’ offers direct access to parliamentarians for members of the DMAG, which are as follows:

The National Association of Funeral Directors

The Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management

The Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors

The Federation of Burial and Cremation Authorities

The Funeral Furnishing Manufacturers’ Association

The Association of Private Crematoria and Cemeteries

The Cremation Society

(You might note the absence of organisations representing bereaved families among the list above, hence why we choose to refer to this particular APPG as the APPG for Funerals.)

According to the APPG for Funerals’ glossy brochure, downloadable here, the first stated intent of the group is:

‘Fair and Proportionate Regulations – We are campaigning on behalf of the sector for fair regulations and suitable legislative change.’

We offer no comment on whether this campaigning is proving effective.

 

We all know how this ends.

19 March 2021
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: Books, death and funerals, funeral reformers, Progressive funeral directors, The future of funerals

We have been asked to write about a new book,  ‘We all know how this ends’ by end of life doula Anna Lyons and progressive funeral director Louise Winter. It was published yesterday by Bloomsbury and celebrated with virtual tea and cake in a moving, inspiring Zoom session last night.

Our thoughts?

 

Buy it. Today.

 

That’s it.

Honestly.

This beautiful book should be on every bookshelf in every home in the country. It should be in every library, in every hospice, in every doctors’ surgery, in every workplace. It should be handed out to anyone when they are given a terminal diagnosis, offered to everyone facing life changing illness, shared and shared and shared again.

Once you have read it, you will want to buy it for your friends too, and for anyone you know whose life is touched by the knowledge that we are all going to die.

Everyone who reads it will find something empowering, comforting and wise within the pages, something that will help change the way you think about dying and death and funerals and bereavement. It’s a treasure trove of nuggets of beauty, woven together by expert hands who want to share what they have learned with us all.

We know Anna and Louise well and admire their work at Life. Death. Whatever. tremendously. They are dear friends and strong advocates of the Good Funeral Guide, and their wise, gentle voices take you through the book, weaving stories and thoughts and insight that they have collected from the many, many people they have worked with.

This book is a collective call for change, a sharing of experience, of heartbreak and tears and humour and wit and wisdom. It’s inspirational and informative, written by real people who want you to know what they’ve learned.

Buy it now. You need to read it.

ICYMI

5 January 2021
Fran Hall
3 Comments
Categories: CMA Market Investigation, Co-operative Funeralcare, Dignity, The future of funerals

 

It would be forgivable to have missed the muted announcement of the publication of the Competition and Markets Authority’s Funeral Markets Investigation Final Report. The culmination of a major review of the funeral market in the United Kingdom which began in June 2018, the Final Report is a weighty 497 page document, with 24 appendices – and a glossary for good measure.

The CMA’s findings were published on the 18th December, the day before the Prime Minister announced new Tier 4 ‘Stay at home’ restrictions on much of the country, effectively cancelling the promised Christmas gatherings for millions.

The strange festive period that followed, together with the continuing daily onslaught of bad news, the confusion and apprehension about the capacity for the NHS to cope with the rapidly rising numbers of Covid patients and the wrangling about schools opening or closing – the fast-changing pace of the strange new world we all find ourselves in means that the CMA’s final findings on the issues in the funeral sector have receded to what seems forever ago.

Most people, even those closely involved with funerals, won’t have found the time or the mental bandwidth to read every word in the report and other accompanying documents yet.

The enormous effort that Stephanie Canet and her team at the CMA have put in over the last 30 months, their scrupulous analysis of the existing landscape in the funeral sector, is in danger of being consigned to a shelf or a file on a computer, to be read at a later date. This is a mistake, and we would urge anyone with any interest in the funeral sector to at least take the time to read the Executive Summary (it’s only 10 pages) and familiarise themselves with the headlines at least.

The findings of the CMA are significant, and the issues identified in their Provisional Report (slightly shorter, at 472 pages!) are upheld in the Final Report. These are outlined below:

  • Due to the inherent emotional distress people experience when arranging a funeral, they understandably tend not to spend time comparing providers. They typically choose to use a funeral director that has been recommended or is familiar to them. For crematoria, people generally select one that is closest to them geographically.
  • Pricing and product information is not provided consistently by funeral directors in a way that allows people to compare different offers.
  • The fees charged by funeral directors and crematoria increased at a rate well above inflation for at least a decade.
  • Most people believe that funeral directors are regulated, but that is not the case in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The investigation found that, although many funeral directors meet good standards, some are providing unacceptably low levels of care of the deceased.
  • Regarding crematoria, there are high barriers to entry in the form of the planning regime, as well as building and operating costs, meaning that crematoria are generally few and far between. Most people have little or no choice about which crematorium to use as there is often only one option within a reasonable distance.

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic during the latter stages of the investigation meant that the findings were necessarily impacted and affected, and the CMA team were unable to develop their proposals for remedies such as price control. This will likely have caused sighs of relief in boardrooms around the country, where the prospect of a cap on prices had been met with horror and strong pushback.

From the CMA’s Press Release about the report: ‘The Final Report sets out further detail on the CMA’s proposed remedies, which are intended to support customers when choosing a funeral director or crematorium, and to place the sector under greater public scrutiny.

They include:

  • an obligation for all funeral directors and crematorium operators to disclose prices in a manner that will help customers make more informed decisions
  • that information must be provided in advance of a customer committing to purchase a service so that people know the price they will be charged and the key terms of business – for example if a deposit is required
  • that customers should be made aware of any relevant business, financial and commercial interests of the funeral director, and that certain practices – such as payments which may incentivise hospitals, care homes or hospices to refer customers to a particular funeral director – will be prohibited
  • a recommendation to government to establish an independent inspection and registration regime to monitor the quality of funeral director services as a first step in the establishment of a broader regulatory regime for funeral services

The CMA continues to have serious concerns about the sector and one of the conclusions of the report is that it should consider whether a further market investigation reference is needed when conditions are more stable.’

Martin Coleman, CMA Panel Inquiry Chair, said:

“Organising a funeral is often very distressing and people can be especially vulnerable during this time. That’s why our remedies are designed to help people make choices that are right for them and ensure they can be confident that their loved one is in good hands.

The CMA will be keeping a close eye on this sector to make sure our remedies are properly implemented and help it to decide whether further action is necessary when circumstances return to a more steady state.”

We think that this is an eminently sensible reservation to make. The funeral sector will inevitably be changed by the impact of Covid-19, and we are already extremely concerned at a new development that has begun to take hold in recent months.

We are seeing tech companies stepping into what is perceived as a gap in the market, offering low-cost funerals organised online and by phone, and heavily promoting themselves with targeted Google Ads to appear as if they are a local funeral company to the viewer.

Most of these companies outsource the collection and care of the person who has died to funeral companies locally and often have absolutely no connection with – or interest in – the provision of quality support or care for bereaved people. The subcontracting bit frequently isn’t mentioned, or is buried under flowery language referring to ‘our partners’. If you look on the ‘About Us’ section of the website it is rare to find out anything about the people behind the business. 

Today we have been informed about one company that is advertising heavily and appears to have branches all over the country. On their website, the team in each location is shown as the same three people, which sets an alarm bell ringing loudly! Coverage from Tyneside to West Sussex with personal service from a team of three is quite something!

Concerned members of the Good Funeral Guild have looked into how this particular company is operating, and, after some detective work, it appears that they are registering as a virtual office, waiting until the Google pin is provided, then cancelling the virtual office subscription and continuing to use the pin in order to appear under searches as a local funeral provider.  Needless to say, the CMA have been informed about this.

Bereaved people, who are frequently, as Martin Coleman observes, especially vulnerable, could easily find themselves choosing a low cost company that appears to be local, thinking they have found a nearby funeral provider with a website, displaying prices online and that therefore they must be ok.  

This is a new and worrying development that the public need to be made aware of, a variation on the long standing lack of transparency that has plagued the funeral sector for decades. The new, faceless, tech based ‘disruptors’ bring nothing to the table other than devaluing the real, vocational work done by genuinely good funeral providers throughout the country, the ones who provide continuity of care, listening ears, impeccable care for the people in the mortuary and personal connection with the clients they serve.

The GFG strongly welcomes the CMA’s continuing involvement and oversight of the funeral sector. We believe this will be invaluable in monitoring the changing market and hopefully raising public awareness about the potential pitfalls of choosing a funeral provider online.

It is a sad fact of life that where there are vulnerable people and money to be made, there will always be those who will take advantage. Ongoing scrutiny of the funeral sector must continue, as the shape and face of predatory money makers styling themselves as ‘funeral directors’ evolves.

In the meantime, and possibly completely unconnected with the CMA’s investigations, there have been some high-level changes at some of the large corporate funeral companies over recent months.

At Dignity PLC, Chief Executive Mike McCollum left his role suddenly in April, taking a hefty £600,000 payoff with him.

His departure was followed by two independent Non-Executive directors, Jane Ashcroft and David Blackwood, who left the Dignity Board in April and June 2020.

In December (on the 18th actually, coincidentally the day the CMA published their Final Report) two further longstanding directors, Steve Whittern, Finance Director and Richard Portman, Corporate Services Director both left abruptly.

Dignity’s current, smaller Board of Directors appears to excel in strategy, finance and executive skills, but none of their bio’s make any mention of funerals. This seems odd, given that they proudly proclaim themselves as ‘The UK leader in funeral related services’ on their website.

Oh, and earlier in the year, Dignity’s Head of Insight, Simon Cox, quietly left his post in October. Regular readers of the blog may recall the bizarre juxtaposition of the Natural Death Centre Charity on Dignity’s stand at the National Funeral Exhibition in 2019, which apparently came about largely as a result of Simon’s efforts to revamp the reputation of the funeral behemoth by cosying up to a much admired and pioneering charity founded by the late, great Nicholas Albery. It caused significant consternation at the time – we wrote about it on the blog here.

Over at Co-operative Funeralcare, the longstanding Director of Funerals, David Collingwood, left abruptly (and apparently reluctantly) – again, on 18th December, the day that the CMA published its report. It seems that the powers-that-be at the big beasts in funeralworld felt that a shake-up at the top was needed, just at the very time that the CMA went public with their findings.

Perhaps the fact that both companies’ strong disagreement with the CMA’s provisional findings was not taken into account in the CMA’s Final Report meant that heads had to roll? See Dignity’s response here and Co-operative Funeralcare’s response here. Or maybe it was simply coincidence. Who knows.

There’s clearly a huge shift and change happening as Covid-19 gouges its scars on our collective consciousness. It’s inevitable that the way our society responds to the huge numbers of premature deaths will change the landscape of funerals forever, and the companies that provide funeral services will change their offering as a consequence.

It may be that the fact that the CMA’s investigation was interrupted by the pandemic will turn out to be beneficial to us all in the long run. The ongoing oversight promised by the CMA may help ensure that the future of funerals, whatever it turns out to be, will be a better one for all of us.

Finally!!

13 August 2020
Fran Hall
4 Comments
Categories: CMA Market Investigation, The future of funerals

 

The Competition and Markets Authority has today published their Provisional Decision Report in the latest stage of their Funerals Market Investigation.

It’s a long read – 472 pages in fact, with appendices being published next week, but you can read the short summary version here.

In essence, the CMA has provisionally found that the markets for funeral director services and crematoria services are not functioning well, and a number of remedies are proposed (delightfully described in the report as ‘sunlight remedies, shining a light on the pricing and back of house practices of the sector’).

Here they are:

‘We are proposing that a number of such measures would be implemented by the CMA as soon as possible after publication of our final report. Under these proposals:

(a) The CMA would actively monitor firms’ revenues and sales volumes in the funerals sector, in order to identify, and where possible, address, any harmful behaviour. The CMA would also publish an annual review of its monitoring activity. To support these activities, we would require certain funeral directors and all crematoria operators to provide specific financial information to the CMA.

(b) We would require funeral directors and crematorium operators to publish price information to support customers in accessing and assessing the price of funeral services. In addition, we would require funeral directors to disclose to customers, information relating to the ownership of the business, any business or financial interests in a price comparison website for the sector and payments or donations to hospitals, care homes and any other similar institutions.

(c) We would prohibit certain arrangements, payments and inducements made by funeral directors with/to third parties such as care homes as well as the solicitation of business through coroner and police contracts, in order to protect vulnerable customers from being channelled towards a given funeral director that may not fully meet their needs.

We propose to make a recommendation to the UK government and the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland and Wales relating to the regulation of the quality provided by funeral directors. This would involve, in the first instance, the establishment of an independent inspection regime and registration of all funeral directors in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.’

Price control is not included at this time due to the impact of Covid-19 on both the sector and the CMA’s ability to collect data. Importantly, the possibility of price control is still on the table though, with the CMA proposing to come back to the subject of funeral prices with a potential supplementary market investigation to resolve pricing issues identified once the impact of the pandemic has resolved to a steady state.

It seems that investors in shares in Dignity PLC might not have noticed this caveat, as Dignity’s share price inexplicably soared today – presumably in giddy relief that the dreaded price cap was not on the list of CMA remedies. Dignity’s Non-Exec Chairman, Clive Whiley and Finance Director Steve Whittern will be chuffed with this upward movement, having purchased 82,000 shares between them in the last few months while the share price was sub £2.90 – it closed today at £6.34, so their combined shares are now worth £1,661,168.76 rather than the £867,266 they were worth on Monday this week…..

Anyway, newly enriched Dignity directors aside, Dignity shareholders would do well to sit down and plough through the entire Report, as it does not make comfortable reading with regard to the ‘Big 3’ (Dignity, Co-operative Funeralcare and Funeral Partners). There are many polite rebuttals of arguments put forward by Big 3 representatives on various aspects of the investigation. It seems that the CMA team were unconvinced by the claims that higher prices reflect higher standards, or indeed that higher prices had any justification at all.

The full report will take a lot of reading and digesting, but in essence the findings validate everything that the GFG has been calling for for years. Transparency of pricing. Transparency of commercial activities. Prohibition of ‘backhanders’ or other ‘arrangements’ with third parties. Full disclosure of involvement with price comparison websites or donations to care homes, hospices or hospitals. An inspector of funerals. And a funeral directors register.

We are delighted that the CMA has been so forthright and comprehensive in their investigations and their findings. It’s clear that the team saw past the protestations of powerful players with the money to pay for expensive reports and fancy presentations, and found for the bereaved people of this country. And we are so, so proud that the Good Funeral Guide and many of our supporters and recommended funeral directors have helped play a part in this hugely important moment of change in the funeral world.

Everyone who wrote to the CMA with their observations or personal accounts, everyone who invited the Investigation team to visit them and find out about their work, everyone who participated in our ‘progressive funeral directors round table discussion’ with CMA Project Director Stephanie Canet and her colleagues last year – all of you have played such an important part in helping to change the landscape of funerals for the better.

Thank you. 

Coping with a pandemic – a funeral director’s perspective (iii)

16 July 2020
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: Covid-19, funeral directors, The future of funerals

The latest in our new series of posts collecting the thoughts and experiences of funeral directors who have worked through the Covid-19 pandemic is from Jo Williamson, founder of Albany Funerals in Kent (top right in the Zoom image below).

“As the government continues to lift the Coronavirus lockdown restrictions this week, now allowing up to 30 people to attend funerals and the reopening of churches for funeral services, it is again time for us funeral directors to reconsider our ways of working, and to readapt once more. Something that we have been doing constantly since mid March.  There is still a lot of fear, tiredness, frustration and anxiety in the air, but we are evolving, and reaching acceptance that this constant state of flux will possibly be the ‘new normal’ at least for the near future.  It has been a strange time. 

Because of our close ties with other progressive funeral directors and the discussions we have regularly on the Good Funeral Guild forum, we had some insight into what was coming back in March. 

Like others, we began to make serious preparations weeks before the government put us into lockdown.  We purchased PPE before the prices went insane and while you could still order full coverings, respirator masks, long gloves etc, and we split the team to work as separately as possible, such an alien concept to us. 

In spite of our relative preparedness, I still see the first two months as dark and frightening times that I will never forget.  The fear of driving through a ghost town to go into people’s homes where someone has just died, weighing up the desire for our own protection and theirs with that of not wanting to alienate grieving families with our CSI or even sci-fi like appearance.  A tricky balance – I just remember constantly apologising.  Funny how now we would not hesitate to wear full PPE even at times of minimum risk, it has become the norm, we all adapt.

Then there was the grappling with what we should and shouldn’t be doing – how far should we be going to help the bereaved say goodbye to their loved ones on their own terms?  We had sleepless nights feeling that we were never doing enough, or maybe too much? The support from other Guild funeral directors was so valuable, we texted, Zoomed and Skyped, sent each other hand creams and encouragements, exchanged ideas.

Although the Coronavirus Bill contained welcome changes in legislation updating the archaic legal and administrative processes for funerals, general government guidelines pertaining to care of the deceased and funerals were confused, unclear and offered little support. 

Could we trust them when the advice was downgraded? Were we putting people and ourselves at unnecessary risk?  Things were constantly changing, we juggled with all of this as the situation evolved, it was obvious that this was a moving target.  It was important that nobody on the team felt pushed into taking risks with their own health to satisfy the requests of those grieving, but on the other hand families were in even more acute pain than usual.  The distress was palpable – the loss was sudden, the goodbyes had not been said in the usual way, grief-stricken families were separated, we couldn’t see them face to face. How can you provide a healthy balance? 

Nevertheless, we did adapt, and so did the families that we worked with, often in the most dire of circumstances.  We have been able to have good and real funerals, in spite of the restrictions. Some people even admitted they loved having something intimate that only close family could attend in a first instance, and not the annoying neighbour or the overbearing aunt.

From the start we were determined to reassure our clients that, contrary to the common belief, you don’t only get one chance to have a ‘funeral’, and that showing up to a crematorium following the death isn’t the ‘be all and end all’ of saying goodbye to someone.  This could be done anywhere, anyhow, and doesn’t take anything away from the love and care you have for that person. 

This was definitely a struggle for the majority, mostly due to the fear of what others would think, because ‘that’s how it’s always been done’ and the need to have something tangibly familiar at a time of great crisis and upheaval.  Some could and others could not adapt to this concept, and it was almost exciting to see people who would normally simply go through the motions of a funeral on automatic pilot now thinking completely outside of the box and finding real comfort in that. I really do feel now that there has been a shift, a deeper understanding and perhaps a desire to update our funeral rites – which I welcome wholeheartedly and hope to encourage further.

An unexpected outcome of the pandemic was the media focus on funerals.  As many of us know, funeral directors are usually the forgotten, the unspoken link to death, operating in the dark, behind the scenes, in secret, slipping into care homes in the middle of the night whilst doors are hurriedly shut, or adorned in Victorian outfits – mostly only alluded to in articles about the rise in funeral costs.

This was a new angle, we became……… interesting!  People were not able to have the funerals they were accustomed to, they wanted information, they wanted our opinion. I gave interviews to the Telegraph, the Independent, the Kent Messenger and featured on an NBC global hangout forum with Michael Jackson’s Rabbi friend and a chap who had arranged a Zoom funeral for his brother who had died of Covid. 

It was sometimes surreal being in the middle of a media storm with everything else going on, but refreshing to talk about our work and passion to a newly engaged audience.  It can only be positive to talk about death and funerals more freely and I hope that this will be a start of a new awareness and shift in our antiquated rites of passage.”

Jo Williamson

Coping with a pandemic – a funeral director’s perspective (ii)

10 July 2020
Fran Hall
No comments
Categories: Covid-19, funeral directors, The future of funerals

In our new series of posts collecting the thoughts and experiences of funeral directors who have worked through the Covid-19 pandemic, today we hear from James Showers, of Family Tree Funerals in Stroud. 

 

“Thank you for inviting us to share our experience of recent months. 

Family Tree Funerals ran in all directions at once to prepare for the imagined tidal wave of corpses. Staff immediately switched to home-working, leaving just myself in the office. We paid £20+ each for masks that were promised as virus-protection and – arriving a month later – were floppy and ill-fitting. We ransacked every cupboard and drawer for body bags and bought every one we could find. One person was full time sourcing aprons (and got ones that would do well in an abattoir), dust suits from Screwfix, ‘Type 5/6’ body suits, cheaply-made visors, more masks, and boxes of gloves (powdered were all we could find at the time). We bulk-ordered a total of 24 coffins, housed in a domestic garage. We bought a refrigerated trailer and were generously offered space in Michael Gamble’s unit to store it. We imagined double-bagging everything, with gloves in triplicate – and scaring the care home residents by pushing our trolley along the corridors dressed like Ghostbusters. 

When we finally stopped our headlong rush and looked around, all was pretty quiet. And while we were still busy arranging funerals, Covid hardly featured in these early weeks.

So very early on, and to try out ‘the look’, I put on every piece of hazard equipment (including air-defenders and blue plastic shoe covers) and rang the bell of a good friend in Clifton, Bristol, who came out onto her balcony for – eventually – a laugh, but not before frightening the neighbours who thought she was infected. In hindsight, a prank in rather poor taste.

When we began getting ‘Suspected Covid’ cases, we faced a decision about the appropriate – and responsible – levels of protection for ourselves and families. We took a decision to allow visits to the person in their coffin at a two-metre distance and five days after death. We closed off the deceased person’s airways and dressed them in their own clothes while wearing PPE.

We have been conscious of the greatly reduced risk from working with a person who has stopped breathing – and that several days ago – compared to the nurses and doctors bending over a living, breathing person who actually has the virus.

If visiting care homes, we decided we would wear our normal clothes with a mask, visor and double gloves until inside the person’s room when we would put aprons over a hazard suit, block the airways, cover the person’s mouth with a disinfected cloth, and transfer them in a sheet to our stretcher or trolley with a cover as normal – and not in a plastic bag. Back at the parlour we would double-disinfect everything, put the person into their clothes and coffin after five days, then allow visitors @2m.

So far so good. Have we been cavalier? I don’t think so. We have been careful, though it could be argued that we took a slightly greater degree of risk than many funeral directors and observers; we chose this quite consciously after considering the way the virus transfers itself.

We expect another wave. We expect coronavirus to feature for a decade – or until a vaccine has been found to work. But we live in Stroud – a rural town which is not densely populated and has plenty of green space – and it seems we have been very lucky to date. 

We have flinched at comments such as ‘every cloud has a silver lining’, and ‘you must be doing well out of this’, as this is simply not the case. We believe our work to be a ‘community service’, and this is true now more than ever.”

James Showers