GFG ‘Recommended By’ listing relaunch

 

We have relaunched our ‘Recommended By’ scheme for funeral directors with a radically remodelled accreditation framework designed to make it sustainable and authoritative nationwide. 

As you know, we already have a limited listing of recommended funeral directors – a listing to which we have not added for some months. Why? Because of the very great difficulty of growing it sustainably. Lack of resources has restricted our ability to visit new or revisit existing recommended funeral directors. Some on the list have not been revisited for up to three years. Not good enough. That is why we have been on the verge of scrapping it altogether.

But rapidly increasing demand from both consumers and funeral directors has caused us to think again.

As we know, extremely negative perceptions of the funeral industry are widespread and intensifying. The fallout from this year’s television documentaries about Co-operative Funeralcare, Funeral Partners Limited and Dignity plc has resulted in grave reputational damage to the industry as a whole.

As a consequence, rising numbers of consumers ring and email, telling us they no longer know whom they can trust, and here at the GFG we now spend an increasing amount of time counselling and guiding them – a service we offer free of charge.

At the same time, rising numbers of funeral directors have approached us, as an independent, consumer-focussed body with an expert knowledge of the industry, asking for accreditation, anxiously (and understandably) seeking to distance themselves from inferior competitors in an increasingly crowded market.

How is the listing going to pay for itself?

Good question. Either bereaved people pay — which we are not happy about — or funeral directors pay. We’re going to charge funeral directors the rate for the job on the grounds that being listed is more than merely likely to benefit them commercially.

It’s something we have thought very hard about. Last year we appealed for voluntary donations from our listed FDs. We are very grateful to those who responded, but it wasn’t nearly enough to fund the project. The lesson we learned is that most people only really value something they pay for.

Won’t this affect the independence of the GFG?

Other independent guides, when they started to make information available online, lost their revenue from hard-copy editions of their guides, which ceased to sell, and they had to change their business model as a consequence. The Good Pub Guide is an example. From 2012 it has had to charge for inclusion, drawing accusations that it is no longer independent because it has simply become a guide to those pubs willing to pay. You may be interested in a response to this from a landlord. Do read the comments, too — here.

In the case of funeral service, FDs unwilling to pay will be those so well-known in their local areas (especially rural areas) that they won’t feel the need to. Funeral consumers in such areas do not need the Good Funeral Guide. However, in areas where consumers seek guidance and reassurance, it is perfectly proper that we serve them by enabling ourselves to accredit superb funeral directors.

The GFG will go on demonstrating its independence because its credibility depends on it. We look forward to exposing the first person to offer us any inducement. We’re not in it to make money, we’re in it to break even. Our independence is reliant on an income stream. We become dependent only when we let that corrupt our core values. Our record shows that this is the least likely thing to happen.

From time to time a funeral director will say to us, ‘But you hate all funeral directors, don’t you?’ It’s an odd thing to say to the people who delivered the first-ever industry Oscars, the Good Funeral Awards, celebrating the best people in funeral service. Of course we don’t hate all funeral directors. We talk about things as they seem to us to be, and we invite unmediated access to anyone who wants to comment. The focus of our work has always been hunting down the heroes of the funeral industry and putting them in touch with the bereaved. 

That’s a win-win.

 

EDITOR’S NOTE: If you are a funeral director interested in being Recommended By The Good Funeral Guide, please click here. If you are already listed, you will need to be re-visited. Please click here

 

 

 

A camper hearse

It was a touching little story and it was all over the papers a week ago: A mechanic appears to have predicted the circumstances surrounding his own death when he died from a heart attack after completing work on converting a VW campervan into a hearse. Mick McDonald, 50, had joked that the job would ‘be the death of him’ but then he became the first person to use it. [Mail]

The owner of the VW campervan, Carl Bell, is now offering his hearse for hire anywhere under the business name of Retro Farewell. His website is still under construction, but you can ring him: 07590908169

The eloquence of silence

Posted by Georgina Pugh

On Friday the autumn sun was just too much – I had to leave my cave like dwelling and head out somewhere you can touch the sky. On the advice of a friend I found myself at the edge of the North York Moors, just past the aptly named ‘surprise view’ at the village of Gillamoor, searching for an old Quaker Burial Ground. In the 1600s non-conformist churches were persecuted and not permitted to bury their dead in consecrated ground so Quakers used private land.

Lowna was used as a cemetery for Quakers between 1675 and 1837 – I guess even after the ban was lifted, the Friends still preferred their lovely corner of peace as the final resting place for their earthly remains.

The burial ground has well and truly returned to nature but remains defined by dry stone walls just high enough to create a space that feels gently enclosed and yet part of the woodlands that surround it. A beck flows nearby. There is an old bench on which you can sit (so long as you are happy to ignore the ‘no entry- falling branches’ health and safety warning sign) and soak up the peace and quietly blessed atmosphere that in my experience always pervades Quaker spaces.

It was quite easy to imagine the Friends all those generations ago, quietly and reverently carrying the bodies of their dead to Lowna and laying them down into the earth – perhaps a prayer if anyone felt moved to speak one, otherwise the rich silence saying all that needed to be said.

I have often mused how afraid we are of silence these days –I used to teach a meditation class at a boarding school in Surrey that was originally established with an hour of silence enshrined in each day. The headmaster described how over the years the ‘Frensham Silence’ had shrunk, being slowly squeezed out by various (I’m sure noble) activities until it was completely absent in the modern school. This seemed an interesting example of how silence has perhaps lost its value in modern society – it’s just not considered productive enough.

I am curious to know of others’ views/experience of weaving silence into modern funerals. I sometimes suggest to a family they might like to have some brief silence as part of a funeral ceremony and sometimes they agree.

Sometimes those silences feel natural and rich and sometimes you can feel people are just not comfortable with it……. Personally I love words and music but I also love quiet and instinctively I feel it has its part to play in a ‘good’ funeral but the whys and hows – I have my thoughts but it would be lovely to hear yours.

Here is the ‘surprise view‘.

The Good Funeral Guide
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