Transparency of ownership

Funeral prices

17 October 2018
Fran Hall
4 Comments
Categories: Arranging a funeral, Dignity, funeral cost, Transparency of ownership

Our recent blog post about Simplicity Cremations, the offshoot of Dignity Funerals, elicited this response from a disapproving reader:

‘This rattled me. “Dignity’s prices are too high and they are the cause of funeral poverty. Big bad dignity”. “Dignity lower their prices and offer a low cost cremation option. Big bad Dignity”.
Seems to me that someone has a bee in their bonnet and constantly looks for the negative.
Simplicity Cremations offers almost zero funeral director contact. The deceased is washed and dressed but that’s about it. A funeral director will arrange the Crem forms and dr’s fees but it stops there. There’s no face to face contact. Families arrange their own officiant, flowers, music and so on. The £600 odd pounds you’re quoting seems to only really cover the admin side of things, collecting and dressing the deceased, transport and a coffin. Seems fair enough.’

Hmm.

Let’s have a look at how the other arm of Dignity PLC (the owners of Simplicity Cremations) prices the services they offer clients.

Somehow, we don’t think that a figure of £600 odd pounds for the ‘admin side of things, collecting and dressing the deceased, transport and a coffin’  is considered ‘fair enough’ by the Dignity management when it comes to charging those families who prefer ‘face to face contact’. Or the bereaved people who do what most people in this country do, go into their local funeral director rather than going online to make arrangements.

Dignity Funerals Ltd is the company which, at the last count, has 831 high street branches (all trading under their original names) It is the company that conducted 39,700 funerals in the first six months of this year.  Or an estimated 12.1% of all the funerals carried out in Britain.

And apparently, Dignity’s methods of pricing their high-street-facilitated funerals are remarkably different from those used for their on-line business.

You will be faced with a bill of significantly more than ‘£600 odd pounds’ for ‘the admin side of things, collecting and dressing the deceased, transport and a coffin’ if you walk into one of their high-street branches.

That ‘face to face contact’ seems to bump up the prices by several thousand pounds.

We collected some current price lists from Dignity branches in the London area and the South East and North of England.

Here’s what we found.

The prices shown are for Dignity’s ‘Full Service Funeral’ – i.e. a funeral on a day and time that you choose (rather than them telling you when you can have it), with a choice of coffin and the option of having the person dressed in their own clothes (rather than a ‘suitable basic gown’), the option to spend time with them at the funeral home, assistance in organising floral tributes, obituaries, service stationery and donations, and the freedom to add limousines if you want.

Or, in other words, what most people would expect a funeral director to offer.

 London  South East England  North England
‘Our Service to You’* £1,705* £1,655* £1,470*
‘Our Service to the Person who has Died’* £1,045* £1,020* £1,015*
‘Your Appointed Funeral Director’* £ 720* £ 700* £ 725*
‘Our Hearses’* £ 720* £ 720* £ 620*
‘Our Limousines’ £ 252 (from) £ 252 (from) £ 175
‘Traditional’ coffin range £ 150* – £1,250 £ 150* – £1250 £ 150* – £1,250
Cardboard coffin £ 660 £ 660 £ 660
Willow coffin £1,015 £1,015 £1,105

If your eyes are glazing over at all the figures, we’ve added them up for you below. And we offer some prices from GFG Recommended Funeral Directors for comparison. (We hadn’t intended to do so, as this post is meant to be about the Dignity prices charged by different arms of the business for very similar services, but we thought comparisons with the prices of some independently owned businesses might be informative.)

We included the components with stars against them in the results table above, i.e. the charge for meeting and making the funeral arrangements, the charge for collecting and caring for the person who died, the peculiar additional charge for ‘Your Appointed Funeral Director’ (we’ve never come across a separate fee for having a funeral director appointed to you before?), and the charge for a hearse. We used the lowest priced coffin in the Dignity range, just to keep it simple, although we think that probably very few families pick the £150 option when presented with the coffin brochure, and we didn’t include embalming, even though the Dignity blurb states ‘…. as members of the National Association of Funeral Directors we recommend the peace of mind that embalming brings.’

We then checked the prices for the same or comparable service listed by independent funeral directors in the same parts of the country on our Recommended list.

Oh, and remember, these are figures for just the funeral director fees.

Cremation or burial costs, medical certificates if required (in England and Wales), and the fee for a minister or officiant will be in addition to the figures shown. Also, flowers, orders of service, limousines, placing of obituaries or other optional extras will all be extra costs. It would probably be wise to budget at least a further £1,000.

Here we go:

If you are in the London area, the Dignity price we were given is £4,340

For comparable services, Leverton & Sons would charge £2,310

From Compassionate Funerals, comparable services would cost £2,159

If you are in South East England, the Dignity price we were given is £4,095

Comparable funeral director services from Albany Funerals would cost £2,245

From Holly’s Funerals, comparable services would cost £2,131

If you are in the North of England,the Dignity price we were given is £3,980

Comparable funeral director services from Barringtons Independent Funeral Services would cost £2,150 (and include a limousine)

From Saint and Forster Funeral Directors, comparable services would cost £1,690)

Now, we know that there’s the fabled ‘face to face contact’ involved with all of the prices above. And a hearse. And visits to the chapel of rest if you want them. And a funeral director too. And staff to carry a coffin.

But what we are trying to illustrate is the VAST chasm between the prices charged for the‘admin side of things, collecting and dressing the deceased, transport and a coffin’ by the same company.

Just as a reminder, Dignity’s Simplicity Cremations ‘Attended Funeral’ costs £1,895 including cremation and doctors’ fees.

The lowest Dignity Funerals Full Service Funeral price we found cost £3,980 WITHOUT cremation and doctors’ fees.

That ‘face to face contact’, flexibility in arrangements, visits to the person who died and providing a hearse and staff at the funeral appears to add something in the region of three thousand pounds to the price.

(Now, in case anyone’s interested, the most recent Dignity Investor Presentation reports £120,100,000 revenue from their funeral services in the first 26 weeks of 2018, with Underlying Operating Profit of £42,100,000

Forty two million pounds. In six months.

The Investor Presentation is downloadable here.)

We’re sure that Dignity will be at pains to tell us that they offer a Simple Funeral for £1,995 plus third party costs.

We know this.

We also know that if you opt for a Dignity Simple Funeral: 

You will not be able to decide the date and time of the funeral, they will choose it.

You will not be able to choose a different coffin.

The person who died will not be dressed in their own clothes.

You will not be able to add a limousine if you want one.

There will not be a funeral procession.  

Payment of third party costs will be required at the time of making the arrangements, with the balance due 48 hours before the funeral.

See ‘Some important points about the Simple Funeral‘ here.

This restricted service is possibly not what most people would expect in return for paying a funeral director almost £2,000 for their service. Even with the face to face contact (and ‘motorised hearse’) you get with Dignity’s Simple Funeral.

You could ditch the face to face contact and the hearse, pick the day and time of your choice, have a similar coffin and save yourself around a thousand pounds (which you’d need to find for the third party costs on top of the Simple Funeral fee) by opting for a Simplicity Cremations Attended Funeral with that all-in price of £1,895.

Though this probably won’t be offered to you if you are a bereaved person who goes into a high street branch of Dignity. It’s only available online. From a company with a different name.

(Or, you could choose to use an independent funeral director instead. Ideally, one that we recommend. Look again at the prices for full, unrestricted funeral services from independent companies above.)

But to go back to the original point of this post, and to directly address the person who objects to our opinion and thinks we constantly look for the negative:

No, on balance, and with the greatest of respect, dear disgruntled reader, we don’t think it’s ‘fair enough’.

We don’t think it’s fair at all for a funeral provider to be subsidising costs for some bereaved people and charging much, much higher prices, for remarkably similar services, to other bereaved people.

Which is what appears to be happening here.

Incidentally, if you’ve read this far, you might want to have a browse through comments from some long-suffering Dignity PLC shareholders here and here, – many have seen the value of their shares crash since last year and are nervously watching the so-called ‘price war’ between Dignity and Co-operative Funeralcare, wondering how this will impact on the value of their holdings.

Some of the more optimistic appear to be hopeful that, under the lead of Paul Turner, Dignity’s new ‘Transformation Director’, the company’s performance will pick up, and the value of their holdings will start heading up from today’s level (around £10.50 a share) back towards the giddy heights of £24.60 a share just last November.

The Dignity transition programme is expected to be largely completed over a three year time frame according to that Investor Presentation. So possibly a scenario for ‘Hold’. (Or ‘Hope’.) Time will tell.

Meanwhile, according to some former and current Dignity employees, there’s a rather gloomier picture on the inside, read reviews here. 

Now, where’s that bonnet?

St. Margaret’s Hospice Funerals

22 January 2018
Fran Hall
3 Comments
Categories: End-of-life issues, Franchise, funeral directors, Hospice, Hospice Funerals, Transparency of ownership

 

It’s here!

Today’s the day that the first Hospice Funerals branch in the UK opens for business.

The people of Taunton have been watching the refurbishment of the former charity shop over the last few weeks, as the grey paint (not dark and forbidding) was applied to the exterior and the shiny new furnishings arrived. 

Over the grey frosting on the windows, and below the statement (mysteriously missing the possessive apostrophe) Hospice Funerals Vision, the following legend proudly declares to the world in one long sentence, using the word ‘hospice’ four times and ‘exemplary’ twice just to hammer home the point: ‘To provide all hospice communities the choice and experience of exemplary hospice funeral services that uniquely reflect the dedication, warmth and reputation of the hospice movement – an extension of exemplary hospice care – caring, transparent and personal.’

Phew. Try reading that without drawing breath. Particularly if you’re sitting in traffic alongside the new funeral business and the lights are about to change.

Anyway, on the day of the official opening of St. Margaret’s Hospice Funerals’ first branch, we thought we’d offer those considering copying this trailblazing franchisor and opening their own Hospice Funerals franchise partnership the results of the survey that we have been running for the last month.

Trustees of hospices thinking of following St. Margaret’s’ lead might be particularly interested in the responses to Q4.

In total, 719 people from across the UK responded. This is rather more than the 245 people from an unnamed North of England town where St. Margaret’s and their partners, Memoria Ltd, carried out market research prior to launching – and apparently received an astounding 82% approval of their Hospice Funerals scheme!

Our findings were somewhat different to their results. Although we obviously don’t know exactly what question they asked.

Here are our five simple questions.

Q1: ‘Before today, had you heard about St. Margaret’s Hospice partnering with Memoria Ltd to set up Hospice Funerals LLP offering other hospices the opportunity to set up funeral director businesses?’

293 people said yes they had.

423 people said no.

Q2: ‘Do you think there is a need for hospices to offer funeral services to their patients and the wider community?’

209 people said yes.

498 people said no.

(370 people offered their reasons in comments. We’ll add a few of these below to give a flavour of the things said.)

Q3: ‘Were you aware of the proposed £100,000 set up cost and £10,000 per annum franchise fee involved with each Hospice Funerals funeral director business?’

94 people said they were aware.

621 said they weren’t.

Q4: ‘Would you want your donation or fund-raising for your local hospice to be used to help set up and fund a hospice funeral business?’

65 people said yes

74 people said they wouldn’t mind how their money was used

573 people said no.

(102 people added comment to this question too.)

Q5: Are you (please tick all that apply):

A member of the public – 516 people

A staff member of a hospice – 12 people

A volunteer in a hospice – 17 people

A fund raiser for a hospice – 26 people

A donor of money or goods to a hospice – 91 people

A funeral director – 91 people

A staff member or volunteer in another organisation that has links to a hospice – 36 people.

Here are some representative examples of comments in response to Q2. (A complete list of all 370 comments received is available on request.)

“I think this could provide good continuity for families but only if it was done sensitively and not for profit”

“Offering funeral services to patients and the wider community is beyond the scope of health and hospice care, and a potential conflict of interest – i.e. hospice benefits financially from the death of patients. Alternatively, hospices could play a role to support the dying person and their family and carers, and the broader community, with education regarding ceremony and body disposal options, without recommending specific providers; the local community will be better served by each hospice providing information about or links to local, independent, support services and providers.”

“Firstly, I think there are enough Funeral Directors in the UK anyway. Secondly, I feel there is a conflict of interest if the “charity sector” is partnering with a profit making organisation.”

“It should be the patients and their relatives’ decision. At such a difficult time, it would be easy to use the linked funeral provider without it necessarily being the right decision. The whole idea makes me feel very uncomfortable.”

“Ethically the hospice should stand back and let the family chose the funeral director of choice not feel obliged to pay a linked company. All rather distasteful.”

“I feel that families may feel pressured into using these services in gratitude and grief.”

“Their job is to do the right thing on the right side of dying. It’s a conflict of interests to venture into the dead side of dying.”

“There are enough caring independent funeral directors. We don’t need another “big faceless player” on the scene.”

“Hospices provide a different service and conflating that with a funeral service appears to be predatory with grieving families as the victims.”

“There is no need for a linked funeral director, since hospices will all fall within the ‘natural’ catchment areas of a range of existing companies. There could be an argument for resourcing hospice chaplaincy better (Christian and other faiths) so that families are able to have a minister that they already know, and who cared for their loved one spiritually in life, take their funeral.”

“I don’t know a lot about this, but it seems like a helpful service for them to provide.”

“I believe these services should be kept seperate for ethical reasons, the preservation of the notion of hospice care, and for the mental well-being of those in care (I.e. the avoidance of a conveyor belt feeling, as though the living person is perceived as being a resource of value when dead).”

“There is a danger of this option being used by big corporate funeral firms for their own profits while all the time making out they are helping hospices with their funds.”

“I had never considered the idea before, and I suppose it might be the last stop on the continuum of care, but I don’t like the idea. It seems very creepy  to have one’s health care team circling like vultures waiting to make money off a funeral.”

“It is a saturated market. There isn’t a need.There should be a demarcation between health and business. The hospice has in essence a captive audience, I honestly think it is an abuse of their privileged position.”

And in response to Q4 – again, a representative sample of the range of comments received from 102 people, with the full list available on request:

“I am happy to help care for patients and to help hospices raise the money needed for their existence. They are an invaluable service. I would not want my money to be helped to support a conglomerate whose directors are set to take funds away from the Hospice.”

“I would NOT be happy to help fund a franchise which would control the business in the style of conventional  funeral provision.  I would be more than happy to contribute towards a not-for-profit co-operative service provided for & by the community.”

“Simply; because it stinks.”

“I think most people would be shocked to hear that their charitable donations raised in loving memory of relatives they have lost would be used to invest in risky private ventures.”

“I would rather the hospices supported their patients by giving them and their families options to consider.  The alternative almost feels like a one stop shop.”

“Hospices need every penny to care for patients and that is why people donate. Using donations to pay for a franchise buy in would be a dishonourable use of funds.”

“I donate to ensure the best care is given at this most difficult time.. The client and family should be able to choose from a range of funeral directors of their choice. I would be very angry and would stop donating if the money was used in any way other than helping people to have the best quality of life until they die.”

“I am assuming that a funeral business would need to make money therefore I would prefer any donations I make would help people at a most difficult time. Perhaps an advice centre within the Hospice would be useful, letting people know what choices are available.”

“This is a ridiculously slanted question. Don’t bother to pretend this is research when it’s clearly a piece of push polling. Unethical.”

Now, we’ve been described as many things in the past, but unethical we ain’t.

We just wanted to know what people actually thought.

Now we’re going to watch and see how this new funeral business with the best branding in town gets on, in an area where bereaved people of the ‘hospice community’ already have a choice of twelve other funeral directors. Many of them are already providing a ‘caring, transparent and personal service’.

We’ll keep you posted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To the trustees of all hospices in the UK

5 December 2017
Fran Hall
7 Comments
Categories: funeral, Funeral franchise, Hospice, The future of funerals, Transparency of ownership

 

Last weekend, we despatched letters to the boards of trustees of every hospice in the UK to share our concerns about the new franchise offer that was launched at the Hospices UK conference the previous week.

Our misgivings about this venture are shared by a number of individuals and companies who gave permission for their names to be added in support. The letter is published in full below, together with the names of those who agree with us.

 

The Chair of the Board of Trustees

SAMPLE Hospice

December 1st 2017

HOSPICE FUNERALS: THE GOOD FUNERAL GUIDE COUNSELS CAUTION

Dear Trustees of SAMPLE Hospice

We write regarding the recent launch of Hospice Funerals LLP, of which you may well be aware. Should you not have heard of this new venture, it is a joint collaboration between St. Margaret’s Hospice Ltd. in Somerset and Memoria Ltd., owner /operator of a number of crematoria around the country and of Low Cost Funeral Ltd.

Hospice Funerals is offering all UK hospices the opportunity of a becoming a partner in their franchise funeral director scheme by becoming a ‘Hospice Provider’, entitled to operate exclusively within a defined area, offering undertaking services branded under the hospice name. For full details, please see the Hospice Funeral website https://www.hospicefunerals.co.uk/

The Good Funeral Guide wishes to draw the attention of the Board of Trustees to the very serious concerns that we have about this proposed new revenue stream generator, despite the public proclamations of how this will address the issue of funeral poverty and ‘bring choice, quality and affordability to families in our communities.’

As a trusted, not for profit, social enterprise company, wholly independent of the funeral industry, that has for years supported, empowered and represented the interests of dying and bereaved people living in the UK, we would be delighted to see a truly ethical, community focused undertaking service evolving from the hospice movement; indeed, we have a blueprint guide to how to set up such a model on our website which we developed in partnership with the Plunkett Foundation several years ago.

Unfortunately, this new model proposed by Hospice Funerals does not, in our opinion, fall into the category of an ethical, community focused service, despite the marketing hype.

THE COMMERCIAL RISK

  1. It is a franchise operation, which is intended to utilise ‘brand recognition’ of the hospice name to leverage advantage over existing providers of undertaking services in the franchise catchment area (defined by Hospice Funerals) and by ‘disrupting the market’, in the process conveniently increasing the numbers of cremations carried out by the crematoria owned by Memoria Ltd.

The Good Funeral Guide is not aware of the successful application of any franchise model to the business of funerals. Franchise operations are best suited to selling merchandise, not personal service. The franchise model proposed by Hospice Funerals is wholly unproven.

  1. Figures provided by Hospice Funerals indicate an extremely optimistic analysis of the potential income of a ‘Hospice Provider’. Their analysis suggests that a single unit operation offering funeral packages at their pre-specified prices, requiring a capital input of £110,00, would generate £356,500 through sales of 100 ‘at-need’ funerals and 46 pre-arranged funerals in year one, yielding profit of £26,656. Year three sales are projected as comprising 200 ‘at-need’ funerals, 120 pre-arranged, generating £212,964 profit.

The Good Funeral Guide contends that these figures are misleading, to say the least.

The ‘funeral market’ is, by admission of the directors of Memoria Ltd, already saturated with providers. In the town of Taunton, where the first Hospice Funerals unit is scheduled to open in early 2018, there are currently twelve funeral directors catering for the needs of local bereaved families. This in an area with a population of 109,000 (the borough of Taunton Deane) and an average UK death rate of 9.4 per 1,000.

Figures quoted by the representatives of Hospice Funerals at the launch of the scheme last week cited the average cost of funerals in some areas as being ‘well over £6,000’.

This figure was derived from the Royal London National Funeral Cost Index 2017 and was arrived at by adding the cost of a burial in a specific London Borough, Kensal Green, (£9,809) to the cost of a cremation in the same borough (£3,223) and dividing in two.

It is mysterious that the Royal London Report didn’t allow for the fact that almost 80% of UK funerals are cremations. A more accurate average would be to factor in the percentage split of types of funeral, (20 x £9,808 + 80 x £3,223, divided by 100), which would result in an average cost of a funeral in the most expensive location in the UK being £4,504, not the much more alarming figure of £6,516 quoted in the report.

Note: all monies that will be paid into a Hospice Funerals pre-arranged funeral plan will be held in a Royal London whole-of-life policy, indicating a close and perhaps unquestioning relationship between the two bodies.

Directly related to the above ‘average cost of funerals’, the prices of the funeral packages offered by Hospice Funerals range from £1,295 for an unattended service at a Memoria crematorium to £3,500 for a traditional service with a hearse and bearers at a crematorium of your choice.

In comparison with the inflated figures quoted as the cost of an average funeral, this might seem to be a wholly worthy attempt to address funeral poverty, as it was described at the Hospice Funerals launch, yet the prices of their funeral packages are equivalent with, and in some cases higher than, those currently charged for comparable services by most independently owned funeral directors.

As an example, two Good Funeral Guide Recommended Funeral Directors in the Taunton area (where the first white labelled Hospice Funerals unit will start operating in 2018) are both lower priced for the same traditional funeral service, with all third-party costs included:

Wallace Stuart Lady Funeral Directors (Bridgwater) £2,630.00

Crescent Funeral Directors (Taunton) £3,000.00

Hospice Funerals £3,500.00

The Good Funeral Guide is concerned that the figures quoted by Hospice Funerals could erroneously lead hospices to think that they would have a straightforward price advantage over competitors in offering a local undertaking service, when this would simply not be the case.

THE REPUTATIONAL RISK

We also consider the employment of the name and reputation of hospice, both specifically in the use of the individual name of a local franchisee, and nationally in the use of the company name ‘Hospice Funerals’, to be a calculated, and indeed one could say cynical, attempt to persuade the public that this new undertaking model is simply an extension of the highly reputable and locally supported end of life care provided by their cherished local hospice.

The fact that it is in fact a white label operation, maximizing the use of the ‘brand name’ of the hospice in each area, controlled by Memoria Ltd, who have divided the UK into ‘catchments’ of 100,000 people (and who are proffering these 650 areas for sale at £10,000 p.a. franchise opportunities to hospices as a means of securing their much-needed income) seems to be lost somewhere in the marketing spin.

We would suggest any hospice considering entering an arrangement of this kind notes the following:

  • Other franchisees could give the brand a bad reputation
  • All profits (a percentage of sales) are shared with the franchisor.
  • The franchise agreement will include restrictions on how you can run the business. You might not be able to make changes to suit your local market.
  • You may find that after time, ongoing franchisor monitoring becomes intrusive
  • The franchisor might go out of business.

Reputational damage to individual hospices signing up to this opportunity could potentially be catastrophic. Legacy donations and in memoriam fundraising could be seriously impacted if families elect to use a hospice funeral home, as they could consider they have done their ‘giving back’ to the hospice through their payment of the fees involved with the funeral.

The move from being perceived as a deserving recipient of gifts and donations to being seen as a money-making business entity, competing with established, trusted and well-liked funeral providers, is a subtle but potentially disastrous one, impacting on the public perception that a hospice is a wholly altruistic organisation.

Comments on our blog post about the advent of Hospice Funerals have been overwhelmingly against the idea of hospices entering the supplying of funeral services.

Phrases used include ‘unethical’ (several times) ‘goes against every principle a hospice should stand by’, ‘will negatively impact their charitable and bequest income’, ‘conflict of interest’, ‘risk losing this public support’, ‘at what point does care and support for the dying and impartial advice given to a family suddenly at sea after a death turn into a sales opportunity?’

On social media, there has been a similar reaction. Questions have been asked about the arms-length relationship between a hospice and its funeral home – how will this work in reality? What will be the impact on the current relationship with local undertakers when the hospice enters the marker as a direct competitor? How will the new hospice funerals service be promoted to the community, and how will this be reacted to?

It seems to us that hospices will be carrying all of the risk in the hope of optimistically calculated but completely unproven rewards.

If SAMPLE HOSPICE is considering partnering with Hospice Funerals, we would counsel strongly that the trustees take heed of our concerns before making your final decision to risk your donated funds to venture into competition against the local funeral directors who work so closely with you to look after the families of those whose lives end in your care.

The Good Funeral Guide is supported in our misgivings about the wisdom of this new venture by the individuals and organisations listed below, some of whom may be known to you as local, independently owned undertakers who share our fears about this seductive offer being touted to hospices around the UK.

Should you wish to contact me directly about this I would be more than happy to discuss our collective concerns further. My e-mail address is fran.hall@goodfuneralguide.co.uk.

Fran Hall

CEO Good Funeral Guide CIC

On behalf of the board of directors of the Good Funeral Guide and the undersigned supporters.

 

A Oliver & Sons Funeral Directors

A.W. Lymn – The Family Funeral Service Ltd

Adrian Pink – Town & Country Funerals

Alistair Turner Funeral Directors

Allistair Anderson & Hasina Zaman – Compassionate Funerals

Amanda Pink – Evelyn’s Funerals

Andrew Dotchin (Reverend)

Andrew Smith Funeral Service

Angie McLachlan MA; BA Hons, BIE

Anna Briggs – Independent Officiator of bespoke funeral ceremonies

Anne & Simon Beckett-Allen – Rosedale Funerals

C Waterhouse & Sons

Carrie-Ann Rouse – Rouse & Co. Independent Funeral Directors

Carrie Weekes & Fran Glover – A Natural Undertaking

Claire Turnham – Only With Love

Claire Young – Young’s Independent Funeral Services

Clare Brookes – VW Funerals

Colin Liddell – Liddell Funeral Services

Coles Funeral Directors

David Hardie & Son Funeral Directors

David Holmes – Holmes & Family

Don O’Dwyer – O’Dwyer Funerals

E A Dodd & Son

Edward Towner – Arthur C. Towner Ltd

Emma Curtis – Secular Minister, Celebrant & Grief Counsellor

Eric Massie Funeral Directors

Gail Willington – Elizabeth Way & Company

Gordon Tulley & Alison Finch – Respect Woodland Green Burial Parks

Heathfield Funeral Service

Jacob Conroy & Sons Funeral Directors

James L Wallace Funeral Directors

Jane Morgan – Jane Morgan Ceremonies

Jeremy Neal – Rotherham Funerals

Jo Loveridge – Albany Funerals

John Beattie & Sons Funeral Directors

John Pinder – W. E. Pinder & Son Ltd

Judith Dandy – Dandelion Farewells

Judy Mansfield – Cherish Ceremonies

Karen & Julian Hussey – A. G. Down

Leverton & Sons

Louise Winter – Poetic Endings

Lucy Coulbert – The Individual Funeral Company & Coulbert Family Funerals

Like & Liz Farthing – Farthing Funeral Service

Maggie Brinklow & Tony Killen – Margaret Rose & Bespoke Funerals

Malcolm Jones – Molyneux Jones Family Funeral Directors

Mark Binnersley MPRCA Communications Consultant

Martin Stibbards – S. Stibbards & Sons

Matthew Lucas Funeral Directors

Michael & Clare Gamble – Michael Gamble Funeral Directors

Nick Armstrong – Armstrongs Funeral Service

Nikki Hill – Bright-Hill Funerals

Overmass & Chapple

Paul Burrows Gibson – Veterans Funerals UK

Paul Sullivan – Sullivan Funeral Directors

Peace Funerals

Peter Grenfell Funeral Directors

Poppy Mardall – Poppy’s Funerals

Philip & Sallie Evans – Sussex Funeral Directors

Rosalie Kuyvenhoven – Rituals Today

Robert Samson Funeral Directors

Rupert Callender – The Green Funeral Company & Callender, Callender, Caughty & Drummond

Saint & Forster Funeral Directors

Simon Helliar-Moore & Robert Helliar-Moore – Crescent Funerals

Simon Smith – Green Fuse, Heart & Soul Funerals

Southgate & Roberts

Tim Coombe – Senior Anatomical Pathology Technician

Tim Purves – William Purves Funeral Directors

Tilly Munro – Community Funeral Specialist

Toby Angel – Sacred Stones Ltd.

Tom Woodhouse Funeral Directors

Wallace Stuart Funeral Directors

W G Catto Funeral Directors

W G Potter

Wood & Hay Funeral Directors

Trading Standards ambush Milton Keynes undertakers

24 January 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: funeral directors, scandals, Transparency of ownership

 

Here’s an interesting article from the Milton Keynes Citizen which describes a Trading Standards department that sets the pace for some of the rest:

Milton Keynes Council Trading Standards has recently undertaken a project looking at the funeral directors industry to determine if businesses are compliant with consumer protection legislation. 

The trade within Milton Keynes consists of five single branch independents, three independents with more than one place of business and one larger company, in addition to the Muslim funeral service that is arranged through the local Mosque.

Of these 40 per cent belong to one or both of the funeral trade associations, either the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD), or the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF).

In relation to disclosing business names 50 per cent were compliant with the legislation. Those that were not compliant failed to display either the registered name in relation to a limited company, or its business name and address in relation to an individual or partnership.

In one instance, where the registered name was not displayed it would have indicated that the business was actually owned by a large company with 30 branches under different business names across the South of England, rather than the perception given of it being an independent funeral director.

The use of small business names by the larger companies suggests that they are implying they are independent funeral directors when in fact they are not.

When questioned one larger company stated that the independent name had been kept as a business name due to the high regard in which the original company had been held locally.

In relation to pricing, 90 per cent of the funeral directors were compliant with the legislation where applicable.

Those funeral directors belonging to one or both of the trade associations’ offer, in line with the associations codes of practice, a ‘simple’ or ‘basic’ funeral service. Included in the price of this service is the cost of the coffin and no coffin options are available.

However, where a more bespoke service is offered with multiple coffin options then a price list was available.

Only one company did not have a price list for the coffin options.

Advice was given in relation to the descriptions of coffins to one company because in the descriptions of the two lower end price options, the cheapest coffin was described as being constructed from paper and the next, and more expensive as ‘wood veneer’, yet both were made of the same construction, merely a different patterned covering.

Two companies described ‘embalming’ as ‘hygienic treatment’ which they stated was an industry standard description. However, although this term was known by the other businesses in Milton Keynes only two businesses used this type of description for embalming. One company stated that although this description is used on their paperwork it is verbally made clear what this treatment is, and neither one offered or carried out the treatment on a regular basis.

One company however, have their own embalmer who carries out over 400 embalmings per year across two geographical areas, including Milton Keynes.

None of the other funeral directors carried out more than 1 or 2 embalmings per year.

In relation to advising customers of their right to cancel the contract, if the contract was signed in the home, only 30% were compliant with the legislation.

All of the businesses who were non-compliant undertook to make changes to become compliant with the relevant legislation and two have successfully applied to become trading standards approved on the Council’s Buy with Confidence scheme.

Karen Ford, head of trading standards in Milton Keynes states: “It is concerning that so many non-compliances were detected but I am reassured things will be put right.

“What is more concerning is the rate of embalmings, which are not always a necessary treatment. My advice to consumers, during one of the most difficult periods in their life, is to ensure they are still getting a fair deal by getting a full breakdown of costs and not to be pressured into paying for something that is not necessary.”

Karen Ford also said: “We are delighted that HW Mason & Sons and Finch & Sons have been accepted onto the Buy With Confidence scheme. Our consumers can now make their choice knowing that at least two local businesses will comply with trading laws and treat their customers fairly.”

We wondered if we detected the hand of Teresa Evans in this. We asked her. No, not directly, she says. But we suppose that Teresa has somewhat raised awareness of consumer protection in the matter of funerals in what is now her home town. She says: “I have written to the Chief Executive of the Trading Standards Institute on a number of occasions calling for a campaign to raise funeral consumer awareness. I didn’t even receive an acknowledgement, so I was quite surprised to learn about this recent project.”

When Teresa writes to you, you know you’ve been written to, whether you reply or not. And she’s not letting it rest there, oh no, not Teresa. She is now in the process of firing off a Freedom of Information request to Trading Standards demanding the names of those firms of undertakers who were inspected and found wanting. 

Find Teresa Evans’ website here. 

Full text of the article in the Milton Keynes Citizen here. 

Cads’ ads

18 March 2011
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Transparency of ownership

Blog follower Simon Irons, whose last comment on a post was very bracing, is keeping watch over the ASA site to see what happens in the case of Liverpool’s independent funeral directors vs the Fairways Partnership. I expect Fairways will get off — they employ very good lawyers. But win or lose, the complainants ought to be able to get some good publicity out of it.

While waiting for something to happen, Simon has done a spot of very useful rummaging. He has unearthed other cases of recent ads reported to the ASA. Here are the links:


http://asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications/2011/1/Lodge-Bros-(Funerals)-Ltd/TF_ADJ_49600.aspx

http://asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications/2011/3/Nigel-Chamberlain–Partners-Ltd/TF_ADJ_49923.aspx

http://asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications/2006/5/Church-View-Funeral-Service-Ltd/CS_41243.aspx

http://asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications/2010/9/LM-Funerals/TF_ADJ_49081.aspx

http://asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications/2011/3/Richard-Steel–Partners-Ltd/TF_ADJ_49930.aspx

http://asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications/2011/3/AH-Cheater-Ltd/TF_ADJ_49929.aspx

 

Hats off to you, Simon! Thank you!