With the average price of a funeral now more than £4,000, the number of people who just can’t pay represents a growing national crisis. But there are options – and much-needed change in the industry may be on the horizon
The pandemic has left millions of Britons financially insecure as the fallout from job losses and furlough tapering continues to hit home.
If you add into that the costs associated with a death in the family, whether expected or not, the pressures can really start to bite.
Funeral poverty can happen when the costs of saying goodbye are beyond a person’s ability to pay – and according to the Fair Funerals Campaign it’s a growing crisis. Especially when the average cost of a funeral in the UK is £4,184, according to insurance firm Sun Life.
In 2014, the cost of dying rose seven times faster than the cost of living, and funeral costs have been climbing faster than inflation for 35 years.
At a time when the bereaved are stressed, vulnerable and disorientated, the shock of the situation and the time pressures involved can leave them with debts they would ordinarily avoid.
Last year, says Fair Funerals, nine per cent of people tasked with organising a funeral struggled to pay for it.
It’s an unregulated industry, often with little price transparency and huge variation in costs across the country. Land prices are going up and cremations are also costly – the results for someone in a precarious financial situation can be devastating.
‘Within weeks he’d passed away with Covid’
Last year, Marlyn Davidson from Glasgow lost her uncle to Covid. Previously, he’d been fit and healthy but he came from a low-income background and didn’t have a funeral plan.
“He was 74 and one minute he was healthy then within a matter of weeks he’d passed away with Covid,” says Marlyn, 56, a practice team leader in the charity sector.
“We had an expectation he would live a bit longer so there were no plans in place. There wasn’t any money left for his funeral so we shopped around. What we found was they’re far, far too expensive – one of the quotes we got was £6,000.
“I work in a charity industry and I thought, what if that happens with many of the people I work with? How are they going to be able to respond to this?”
Marlyn discovered direct cremation – a no-fuss, no-funeral event where the body is taken to the crematorium from the place of death and the ashes are later returned to the family. No relatives attend the cremation and the family can’t choose the time.
But that didn’t matter to Marlyn. “When the ashes were returned we then arranged to have a family catch-up but at that time because of Covid it had to be virtual,” she says.
“We still had tears and a bit of laughter, and the ashes were given to my mother as he was her brother. He was Catholic in religion, but he didn’t believe in going to church or chapel so there was no point going through that when he didn’t have those beliefs.”
Three of Marlyn’s relatives died with Covid, and the family chose direct cremation for each of them. She feels it was the right decision.
“I don’t feel that we missed out on anything whatsoever. You can still get together to have the laughs, jokes, sadness after it but at a much more realistic cost.”
The family went to Glasgow-based Caledonia Cremation, Scotland’s first not-for-profit funeral director. It’s charity-owned and was launched in 2018 after founder Paul McColgan – who had worked in poverty prevention – suffered a sudden death in his family and learned how quickly funeral costs had been rising.
Now, they specialise in direct cremation and their cost is around £1,000 – significantly less than even the simplest traditional funeral.
Transparency and clarity
Their funeral director Angela Johnstone says that, as well as tackling funeral poverty (they pledge never to turn anyone away) they’re determined to introduce transparency and fairness.
“We have shaken the industry up,” she says. “Funeral directors, especially in rural or remote areas, have been able to charge what they want. What we’ve campaigned for is transparency and for funeral directors to be upfront and clear in their pricing, and offer services to people who are on strict budgets.
“I still speak to people on an almost daily basis who, when they said they wanted something simple, were not given the same level of service as they would have if they’d walked in with £10,000. The funeral directors are trying to upsell.”
She also points out that it’s the working poor who can be hardest hit. People in a part-time job on minimum wage, for example, won’t qualify for any government help but may struggle to pay for even a direct cremation.
“On top of the grief, they’re worrying themselves sick about the cost of a funeral,” Angela says. “But whether it’s direct cremation or not, don’t go taking out a payday loan. I don’t think anybody would want to put that on somebody who’s been left behind.”
Getting support
Direct cremation may not be for everyone, and even when it is a good choice the costs may still be challenging for families. So what help is out there?
Funeral Expenses Payments are available to people on certain benefits or tax credits. There’s no fixed sum paid out by the government and the money may have to be repaid if the person who died left money or assets.
They’re unlikely to cover the full cost, and there’s likely to be a gap between the bereaved person having to settle the bill and receiving the payment.
Successful applicants, on average, received £1,534, says Fair Funerals. That’s only 40 per cent of what a simple funeral would typically cost.
In Scotland, it’s the Funeral Support Payment. Again, the person meeting the costs of the funeral needs to be receiving certain benefits or tax credits.
There’s also the Bereavement Support Payment, available in England, Scotland and Wales to people whose spouse or civil partner has died. The cash isn’t specifically for funerals and the person who died must have been under state pension age.
But often, a simple funeral doesn’t feel right. In the grip of grief, people can feel determined to do what they see as appropriate for their loved one, but when the funds aren’t there they can be left feeling guilt and shame. So unsurprisingly, funeral poverty can end up interfering with the grieving process.
Fair Funerals have drawn up a pledge for funeral directors to show they’re committed to price transparency in the industry and to offer a much-needed degree of protection for consumers.
By signing up, firms agree to put honesty at the centre of their work and pledge to be part of the change that’s needed in the industry. Families can look for the Fair Funerals logo on companies’ websites and paperwork or a certificate in their premises and know that they shouldn’t be taken advantage of or left bewildered by features they don’t need or want.
The Funeral Poverty Alliance is a network of more than 50 organisations working together to stop people falling into debt after a loved-one dies. It’s founded on the belief that everyone should have access to a meaningful and affordable funeral.
Its key aims are to influence the industry and the government – it wants to improve access to municipal funerals and encourage good practice in public health funerals (what used to be called “pauper’s” funerals).
It also wants to ensure that regulation is introduced to the industry.
With the knowledge the alliance has gathered through its work, it’s been able to launch Down to Earth, the only UK-wide advice service for people struggling to afford a funeral.
Services like this – and improved awareness more generally – will be key to preventing people falling into debt at one of the most vulnerable times in their life.
And it costs nothing for families to have the difficult discussions and find out what each member wants when the time comes. It may be awkward, but if it avoids stress, guilt and possibly needless debt further down the line then it’s probably worth it.
Marlyn’s family had those conversations. As she says of her late uncle: “He was always going on about how much it cost for a funeral. What he said was, I won’t be here to know what the cost was so don’t spend money on me.”
