‘Serious concerns in the funeral sector’ identified by CMA
The Competitions and Markets Authority are proposing a major funerals probe after identifying serious concerns in the funeral sector. It’s a long read – 133 pages – find the full interim report on the Funerals Market Study page here (scroll down for ‘Interim report and consultation’. We publish this morning’s press release in full below: […]
Funeral Markets Study – research findings
Last week, the Competition and Markets Authority published the findings of the consumer research undertaken as part of their Funeral Markets Study. It makes interesting reading. The research was commissioned from Research Works and Ipsos MORI as part of the attempt to understand the behaviour, experiences and decision-making of people who had recently engaged the services […]
Funeral prices
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 […]
We haven’t approved you, Dignity Funerals
We want to make it very clear to anyone who might be unaware – the Good Funeral Guide CIC had nothing to do with the recent announcement of Dignity PLC’s sidekick, Simplicity Cremations as ‘The Best Direct Cremation Provider 2018’ with a ‘Good Funeral Award’. Having been co-organiser since they began, the Good Funeral Guide […]
The environmental cost of a funeral
Yesterday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published their Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5’C As policy makers and news editors across the world digested the implications of the findings and the stark warning that doing nothing is not an option if we want our children and grandchildren to live in a world with […]
Are you a funeral celebrant?
The GFG is delighted to have been invited to join representatives of various organisations on a working group to look at the role of funeral celebrants. We’ve called this working group the Funeral Celebrancy Council and last week the FCC spoke to hundreds of celebrants at the second National Celebrant Convention about the work we’ve been […]
Funeral trade association calls for regulation
The National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors has today issued a press release stating its position on the subject of regulation. SAIF members received an e-mail yesterday advising them that ‘after careful consideration we have decided that regulation across England and Wales is a good thing and welcome it’. The ‘careful consideration’ appears […]
Beyond’s response to the responses to the CMA
The chaps over at Beyond have detailed their thoughts about some of the responses to the recent Competition and Markets Authority Funerals Market Study. Specifically, the responses from the National Association of Funeral Directors and Dignity PLC. NB Beyond say in their introduction that they have a ‘few critiques’ concerning these submissions – it looks […]
Thoughts about Dignity PLC from a reader
Over the weekend, one of our many readers posted a comment on a previous blog post about Dignity PLC’s report on what they tell us people ‘assume, want and expect from funeral directors. We thought this comment deserved elevating to a post in its own right. So here it is. (Sorry about the illustration of […]
And here (belatedly) are the details from that Dignity report
Yesterday we wrote about the media coverage of Dignity’s findings in their research ‘Time to Talk About Quality and Standards’ and our thoughts about this. Before writing, we spent some time looking for the full report online, unsuccessfully. Last night, Dignity kindly sent us a link to the full report which can now be found […]
