The cat is out of the bag. Monday’s Dispatches will mount a televisual airstrike on Co-operative Funeralcare. Channel 4 managed to get an undercover reporter into a hub and filmed bodies stacked “like TV sets” in racks – a disturbing image which will have a devastating impact on an organisation which has spent a great deal of money marketing itself as the people’s undertaker.
This is not all that the Dispatches team achieved. There will be more.
Responses so far from beleaguered Funeralcare spinners include:
‘We are … shocked and disappointed by the information provided to us by this programme, which goes against everything we stand for.
‘We do not believe that the instances shown in the programme are representative of our many caring staff.
‘We have however, launched an immediate investigation into the programme’s findings and will take any action necessary to ensure our high standards and our policy of enabling clients to make informed choices is maintained.’
Funeralcare boss George Tinning told the Sun on Sunday: “This isn’t the way I want our funeral directors to behave. We will investigate and deal with it appropriately.”
Here at the GFG we have never hidden our loathing of an organisation which has both betrayed its foundational values and is also commercially cretinous. It couldn’t go on like this. The truth was bound to come out sometime. And when you take your stand on ethical probity, you’ve a heck of a long way further to fall.
Tomorrow is going to be a horrible day for bereaved people who have entrusted their dead to Funeralcare. It is going to be a horrible day, too, for decent, caring Funeralcare employees who have been badly let down by their management.
And the catastrophe will not be confined to Funeralcare. There will be contagion. Funeralcare is a member of the NAFD. What does this say about self-regulation and compliance controls?