Fran Hall – Page 24 – The Good Funeral Guide

You say death, I say life

22 June 2016

Fran Hall

8 Comments

Categories: Art and death, death and funerals, Party

In sad news this week, The Telegraph’s advertorial-disguised-as-editorial series of funeral cost hysteria continues. This time it’s a well-heeded warning to check before you hand over your money to a funeral plan complete with projections of the outrageous cost of dying in 2023.

Concerned readers need not worry. Simply purchase a Telegraph endorsed Dignity funeral plan with a generous £50 discount immediately by following the links prominently displayed throughout the article.

In more cheerful news, an 80 year old funeral parlour in Australia, Turnbull Family Funerals, has gained international press attention after it hosted a dramatic Funeral Party as part of the Dark MoFo Festival.

Mourners and revellers were invited into the family funeral home, which also has an in house crematory, to experience a gothic ball dripping in decedent darkness and excess. The funeral home is a working business during the day, and has hosted thousands of funerals for local families.

The evening was complete with a red-lit installation reading ‘lost without you’, a ‘dress-to-kill’ dress code, deathly performance art, coffins in which to rest, and mock embalmings and funereal spa treatments for the not yet dearly departed.

Marshmallows were also toasted over coals warmed on the crematory fire as the funeral home manager Scott Turnbull answered questions about life and death. As he told the Guardian:

“You say death. I call it life. And we as a community [need to] get to a point where we understand that ‘death’ is just a day … If people get to know death in their normal life, when it comes to you, you’re much more prepared.”

I quite like the sound of it, although I think British funeral homes lack both the required space and the drama to hold a copycat party.

After-hours party at the crem anyone?

Burgundy stays Burgundy, Lilac becomes Turquoise

15 June 2016

Fran Hall

2 Comments

Categories: Co-op, Co-operative Funeralcare, Dignity, funeral cost, funeral plans

The Telegraph & Dignity

In Burgundy coloured news

The Telegraph has been hard at work this month, convincing us that the funeral situation in the UK really is dire.

On the 10th June, we heard about a grieving gentlemen in New Milton, Hants, who is digging a grave in his back garden to bury his 101 year old mother, unwilling to pay ‘the outrageous cost of a funeral’. According to the article, the resourceful John Wright is even considering purchasing a large fridge to avoid the cost of keeping his mother in the local mortuary.

The article claims that a local funeral director (as yet unnamed) quoted £2500 just to take Mr Wright’s mother’s body to the church in a hearse.

Anyone concerned about this sorry state of affairs and wondering whether they’ll also need to find the space for a large fridge in their garage, need not have worried. The Telegraph had it all in hand.

On the 13th June, another article appeared in The Telegraph, this time comparing funeral costs and an analysis of available life insurance policies and funeral plans, suggesting that nothing on the market truly covers the cost of a funeral.

Both articles ended with an endorsement for The Telegraph’s own funeral plan, in partnership with the burgundy coloured funeral group, Dignity PLC. As well as a generous £50 discount for all Telegraph readers and a link to a glossy sales website with further hysteria about the cost of funerals and how it’s only going to get worse. Much much worse.

How about an unbiased report into funeral costs, not funded by anyone with a financial interest in selling funeral plans? Or non-hysterical media coverage of the cost of a funeral with no sales agenda? Or a realistic review of the many viable affordable alternatives that aren’t package deals out there?

Anyone out there? Anywhere?

*The once lilac Cooperative Funeralcare has undergone a rebrand and become turquoise*

In lilac coloured news

Following the sale of its five crematoria to our burgundy coloured acquaintances Dignity Plc for £43m, the lilac coloured Co-Op freed up lots of cash to spend on a comprehensive rebrand of its businesses, also promising to invest in improving funeral parlours under its Funeralcare brand.

The group has already returned to its classic clover-leaf logo, which first appeared in the late 1960s. The aim was to be reassuringly retro, harping back to the good old days of shops, produce and dividend stamps, before the days of controversial CEOs with massive pay packages sullied the Co-Op name.

As part of the rebrand, the shade of lilac that characterised Co-Op’s British High Street funeral chain, Funeralcare, is no more, replaced by a calmly reassuring turquoise. Personally I was hoping for a garish shade of parakeet green, not dissimilar to the Queen’s birthday outfit.

The updated Funeralcare website is already live and rumour has it that the first funeral home to be refurbished with the new branding has been completed in Scotland. We don’t yet know whether funeral directors will be issued with turquoise cravats, but we’d very much like to find out.

Whether the re-brand is anything other than a lick of paint and a wardrobe change remains to be seen. In the meantime, turquoise is the new lilac is the new black.

It’s my funeral

6 June 2016

Fran Hall

9 Comments

Categories: Attitudes to death, Good Funeral Guide, The future of funerals

*Louise Winter, Editor, The Good Funeral Guide*

Dearly beloved of Funeralworld and beyond,

I’m thrilled to announce that I’m the new editor of The Good Funeral Guide, under the mentorship and guidance of the wonderful founder Charles Cowling and CEO Fran Hall.

Far from facing its own funeral, the need for a sustainable GFG has never been so strong. In my exciting new role, I’ll be continuing the amazing work Charles has put his heart and soul into over the last ten years.

My aims are to raise the public’s expectations of funerals whilst helping the industry to improve standards and ensuring that the Good Funeral Guide remains the trusted, independent, not-for-profit resource for helping the consumers of today and tomorrow to arrange the funerals they actually want.

The tiny team here at GFG HQ has got its work cut out. There are plenty of funeral directors to accredit, many coffins to try out, awkward questions to ask of the crematoria, progressive funeral types to meet for tea and cake and innovative death events to attend.

Whilst we figure out what the future of funerals and the GFG might hold, I want to hear from you. Send me your ideas, thoughts, frustrations, questions, event invitations and stories from the funeral frontline. Or, if you’re a disgruntled member of the funeral industry wondering what I’m doing here, you’re welcome to send my favourite rotting funeral flowers my way. I’ll turn them into art.

Fran and I will be tweeting about our adventures in Funeralworld at @greatfunerals. You can also stay up to date by liking us on Facebook. Getting in touch via old fashioned email is good too, but unlike most of the funeral industry, the GFG doesn’t have a fax machine.

In life, in death, and everything between.

Louise x

Get in touch
louise.winter@goodfuneralguide.co.uk
@poetic_endings or @greatfunerals

Louise Winter

About Louise Winter
Louise Winter is the newly appointed Editor of the Good Funeral Guide and the founder of modern funeral service Poetic Endings. She trained with Civil Ceremonies to earn a National Qualification Level 3 Diploma in Funeral Celebrancy, and has volunteered at St Luke’s Hospice and Weston Park Hospital in Sheffield. Known as the Mary Poppins of Death, she hosts innovative events about death, dying, life and living around the world as well as creating relevant and meaningful funerals for her clients.

Louise completed a degree in Fashion Promotion at the London College of Fashion in 2009. Following a stint as Deputy Editor of LFW’s Vauxhall Fashion Scout, she launched a magazine for struggling twenty somethings, Dirty Laundry. Previously, she brought her unique creativity and storytelling to the world of brands, working with Value Retail, Jack Daniel’s, NASA, Arcadia, Bestival, ASOS and Time Out, amongst many others. She’s lived in London, Paris and New York.

She loves life, death and everything in-between.

Sacred Stones

5 June 2016

Fran Hall

No comments

Categories: ashes, ceremony, cremation

Sacred Stones

“The barrow, its shape, its natural stone, its location, instantly gave me the same feeling of the past being an essential part of the present, of our lives being a shared history. Of peace and calm and connection. And I am drawn to the barrow as a place of rest and pilgrimage for exactly those reasons.” Anna Pugh, Bedford.

Last week we visited Willow Row, the round barrow destined to house hundreds of cremated remains that is being constructed in Cambridgeshire by Sacred Stones Ltd. Three of the company directors were there to meet curious locals and others fascinated by the prospect of a Neolithic style barrow being built in the 21^st century.

Toby Angel is a former business development manager who met stonemasons Martin Fildes and Geraint Davies just after they had completed work on the long barrow at All Cannings in Wiltshire. Thinking back to his aunt’s cremation service, Toby recalled just what an impersonal experience it had been ‘at an ugly, municipal building’. He felt that there had to be a better way, and when he met Martin and Geraint, he realised that the privately commissioned barrow that they had just created in Wiltshire was it.

A vision of providing a modern interpretation of ancient burial mounds across the UK was born, and now the first of their sites is becoming a reality, in a secluded spinney on farmland near St. Neots. Willow Row round barrow, once complete, will have 345 niches where urns of cremated remains can be placed in hand crafted niches. Most will have space for two urns but there will also be some larger ones where four or five urns can be placed together. Single capsules will also be available, made of Portland Stone and sealed with beeswax.

Sitting in the inner circle of what will become the central chamber, we quizzed Toby and Martin about their ambitions. There was no mistaking the passion that has gripped them personally as the project has taken shape, and both men talked eagerly about what the creation of Willow Row meant to them. There was a strong sense of connection to our ancestors who toiled with stones thousands of years ago to create barrows for their dead to be laid to rest in sacred surroundings. Even Geraint the stonemason, a man of few words (but immense forearms..) became animated when he was explaining how the beautiful limestone being used in the construction tells him where it wants to go. “If it’s not the right place for it, it doesn’t work,” he said.

The organic growth of the barrow belies the years of craftsmanship involved in its design and construction, and even in this early stage it is clear that Willow Row is going to be a beautiful and very special building that will blend into its surroundings in a totally natural way. Sheltered from the environment by the surrounding trees and bushes, the barrow will eventually be covered with topsoil and look as if it has been there for thousands of years. The only sound you hear as you approach it is birdsong, and despite the surrounding fields being part of a working arable farm, there is peacefulness in the chosen spinney around the barrow that is perfectly in keeping with the reverence of it becoming a final resting place for hundreds of people.

We have asked Toby to write a guest blog for us over the coming months as Willow Row reaches completion, and to keep us updated with how his vision, inspired by ancestral rituals and rites, becomes a reality. We liked the idea tremendously. Only time will tell if the people of Cambridgeshire and the surrounding areas do so too, but in the meantime Toby and his co-directors have plans to build more barrows in Hampshire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Buckinghamshire, Somerset, Yorkshire, Scotland and Wales.

Together in electric dreams

30 May 2016

Fran Hall

2 Comments

Categories: alternative funerals, funeral trends, green funeral, Hearses

Brahms EcoHearse

We have seen the future and it’s electric.

Back in 2013 we told you about the Brahms electric hearse, the highlight for us of that year’s National Funeral Exhibition.

https://www.goodfuneralguide.co.uk/2013/06/peaceful-ev-feeling/

Three years on, we dropped in on Steve Cousins yesterday to see how business was going. He’s a man who doesn’t give up, even when faced with an implacable wall of disinterest from the funeral industry. Other than Leverton and Sons of course, who have been running their Eco-Hearse and accompanying passenger Eco-car around London for some time. Over 10,000 miles worth of funeral travel in fact. Have a look. http://www.levertons.co.uk/#!eco-hearse/c1ofy

Why aren’t funeral directors flocking to follow suit? Steve doesn’t know. But he’s not deterred. He’s introduced a hire option for funeral directors who don’t want to commit to purchasing one of these really lovely little cars – although at under £30,000 purchase price for a fully fitted converted Nissan Leaf with a walnut motorised deck and additional safety features the price sits quite nicely in comparison with the circa £135,000 for a traditional style gas guzzler…

Oh, and there’s obviously no gas guzzling with an Eco-hearse. Just a recharge of the battery every 80 miles or so. So the running costs are next to nothing in comparison. And the silent glide with no engine noise is just perfect for arriving at a funeral.

We loved the compact size of the Eco-hearse. It’s more intimate, less showy, a really elegant little car, with beautifully thought through adaptations to enable it to function as a hearse. The tilting deck lowers the foot of the coffin so that the driver can see safely out through the glass where the passenger window would have been – now replaced by a sweeping curve of side glass, which allows the entire coffin to be seen as the car goes by.

Maybe FDs are worried about the performance we thought? So we asked an expert driver to take it for a test run. The GFG Stig had never driven an electric car before, but having quizzed Steve and his colleague Andrew in detail about the design and development, he set off for a trial ride – and came back smiling. “Handles very nicely,” said our Stig, “It’s solidly built, the weight of the battery under the floor keeps it sitting beautifully on the road and the tilting deck means there’s good visibility with a coffin in place. And there’s a lovely little turbo whistle just audible as you go along. I like it a lot.”

He liked it so much that he did a few 0-60 accelerations to check the power, and reported back a surprising 10 seconds to achieve that speed. We pointed out that this probably wasn’t high on the criteria of funeral fleet managers when considering a new hearse, but he’d had so much fun that we let him off.

So come on all you funeral directors out there. What’s stopping you from getting an electric hearse? We can’t see any good reason why they aren’t a regular sight queuing silently up crematoria drives. Tell us why they’re not?

Or tell Steve Cousins. He’d love to know. See the Brahms website here for his contact details: www.brahmselectricvehicles.co.uk

August Equity out, Montagu Private Equity in. Your local funeral directors.

20 May 2016

Fran Hall

5 Comments

Categories: Funeral Partners

Screen Shot 2016-05-20 at 17.19.47

Thanks to Robert De Baahr from the London Society of Death for bringing this to our attention – from Insider Media Ltd.

‘European private equity firm Montagu has acquired a majority stake in a Berkshire-headquartered funeral services provider which has more than 130 branches throughout the country.

Founded in 2007 by chief executive Phillip Greenfield, Funeral Services Partnership (FSP) is the third largest provider in the UK. The Reading-headquartered company employees about 500 staff and oversees 10,500 funerals per year.

FSP’s model is based on acquiring independent funeral directors and putting in “investment, training and improved processes”.

Montagu will partner with Phillip Greenfield and his management team to grow the business by making further acquisitions and through organic expansion.

Greenfield said: “We want to continue to grow our presence in the UK market and we are confident that Montagu will be great partners given their previous experience of the sector. We look forward to working with Alex and the team going forward.”

Alex Dabbous, director at Montagu, added: “We are proud to be investing in FSP, a strong brand name in a sector we know well. FSP provides important and essential services, and we will work hard with Phillip and his team to help build the business further in the years to come.”

The financial details of the deal were undisclosed.’

Keeping an eye on the costs

18 May 2016

Fran Hall

8 Comments

Categories: burial, cemeteries, cremation, crematoria, Dignity, funeral cost

Hats off to independent funeral booking website Funeralbooker for publishing their findings on the costs of funeral disbursements.

Funeral poverty shows no sign of abating as new data reveals the most expensive crematoria and cemeteries in the UK

Key points:

THE COST OF DYING CONTINUES TO RISE.

NEW DATA REVEALS THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND IS ONE OF THE MOST EXPENSIVE PLACES TO BE CREMATED OR BURIED IN THE UK.

MASSIVE INCREASE IN COSTS YEAR ON YEAR ASSOCIATED WITH LOCAL AUTHORITY OWNED CREMATORIA AND CEMETERIES.

Beckenham in Kent; Crawley and Chichester in West Sussex; Leatherhead in Surrey and Nuneaton in Warwickshire all tie for first place as the locations of the most expensive crematoria in the UK – with cremation costing a staggering £956.

The cheapest place to be cremated in the UK is the City of Belfast Crematorium, where it costs just £364.

Prices are set by local councils for public facilities or by private companies, like Dignity PLC, for the privately owned ones.

Around one third of the entire cost of a funeral is for cremation; around half if a burial is opted for.

They have collated the costs of every cemetery and crematorium for 2015 and 2016 and produced four data-sets with searchable maps.

When it comes to burial, London takes the top slot, with four cemeteries in Wandsworth all charging £4,561 apiece.

Northern Ireland again is the cheapest place in the UK to be buried.

There have also been massive, above-inflation rises in costs for both burial and cremation. At Crownhill crematorium in Milton Keynes, prices have risen by 29.7%, year on year. The crematorium is owned by the local authority, as are the other crematoria on the list with the largest price rises.

It’s the same story when it comes to burials. North Watford Cemetery in London tops the list with prices increasing by 49.1% this year compared to 2015.

“Cuts in council funding may mean that many councils are turning to crematoriums and cemeteries to balance the books – these price increases could be a hidden cost of austerity” said James Dunn, the co-founder of Funeralbooker.

FOR FULL DATA AND SEARCHABLE MAPS SEE:

2016 UK Burial Costs
https://funeralbooker.com/resources/uk-burial-costs-2016

2016 UK Burial Cost % increases from 2015
https://funeralbooker.com/resources/uk-burial-costs-rises-2016

2016 UK Cremation Costs
https://funeralbooker.com/resources/uk-cremation-costs-2016

2016 UK Cremation Cost % increases from 2015
https://funeralbooker.com/resources/uk-cremation-costs-rises-2016

Don’t miss this!

3 May 2016

Fran Hall

2 Comments

Categories: Art and death, Attitudes to death, death and funerals

Thinking Outside the Box

Brighton looks like the place to be for anyone with half an interest in funeralworld this May – GFG favourite Liz Rothschild is performing her one-woman show Outside The Box at the Brighton Fringe Festival from May 14th – 17th.

Billed as ‘A live show about death’, Outside The Box is a spoken word performance of stories collected from life’s finish-line by Liz, a performer, celebrant and manager of Cemetery of the Year 2015, Westmill Woodland Burial Ground.

The promotional flyer reads ‘This groundbreaking show combines mercurial tales and miraculous truths with a hint of history and some pithy commentary on the funeral industry (from one who knows). And there is a chance to share the conversation and add your http://www.besttramadolonlinestore.com stories to the show’s repertoire as Liz takes it round the country this year and next.’

At GFG Towers we have seen the script – and booked our tickets! If you can make it along to Village in Islingword Road to see Liz, come and join us – tickets are £8 each and available from the Fringe Box Office here

If you can’t get to Brighton but would be interested in working with Liz to put on a performance of Outside the Box in your area contact here here

Brighton calling

30 April 2016

Fran Hall

No comments

Categories: Attitudes to death, Death education

TiptoeThruTheTombstones_p1

Guest post from Cara Mair and Tora Colwill

Hello there! As long time fans of all things Good Funeral Guide we are excited to be featured here in the blog!

We are Brighton funeral directors Cara from Arka and Tora from The Modern Funeral, collaborating as The Brighton Death Festival to bring death interest events and to contribute to making the conversations around death and dying a little louder.

This year for Dying Matters Awareness Week, our event is being held on the afternoon of Saturday 14th May at The Extra Mural Chapel in the middle of the tomb trail on land managed by Brighton council. Since we’re in Brighton, and we are all seeking to find our own language for the conversation, we want to make it as open, fearless and interesting as we can. In a safe, beautiful setting, there will be tranquil spaces set aside for reflection and conversation and we’ve contacted a broad range of people with various talents to contribute to the day.

There will be information about funeral options, including demonstrations of how to make and decorate coffins. There will be musicians and poets to be discovered around the graveyard. A performance about death ritual within the chapel space has been designed to spark off thoughts about what happens to our bodies between the point of death and the funeral whatever shape that may take.

We want the afternoon to be a chance for likeminded people to come and share thoughts and plans that relate death and funerals – and we’d love your contribution!

Please get in touch if you’d like to know more:

Tora 01273569 052 tora@themodernfuneral.com

Cara 01273 621444 info@arkafunerals.co.uk

You can follow us on facebook:

www.facebook.com/brightondeathfestival

www.facebook.com/modernfunerals

www.facebook.com/arkaoriginalfunerals

Or find more information at www.brightondeathfestival.com

A not so quiet revolution

22 April 2016

Fran Hall

32 Comments

Categories: Uncategorised

Guest post by Lucy Coulbert, owner of Coulbert Family Funerals and The Individual Funeral Company.

Lucy’s been invited back to Westminster next week. And she’d like your thoughts about what she’s planning to say.

In the aftermath of the Support for the bereaved enquiry, I was not only contacted by a lot of media agencies, but I have also been invited to a meeting with Baroness Altmann next week along with a further meeting with the DWP.

It is my understanding that they will be talking about the issues that have arisen as part of this enquiry and are looking for recommendations on how to make claiming easier.

We have to be very clear that we are talking about funerals for people who are applying to the DWP for financial help. Our recommendations are outlined below.

The enquiry suggested there should be an online checker for people applying to the DWP for financial help paying for a funeral to see if they are eligible. I happen to think this is a good idea.

They also suggested a list of funeral directors should then appear based on postcode with their prices. While in practice this is a good idea, you will never get a like for like quote as funeral directors bundle their charges in very different ways. So one funeral director may charge for the removal fee and hearse fee in one lump sum and others itemise each cost. Therefore, if you don’t want a traditional hearse, you are still paying the same charge.

I think to appear on this website, a few things should happen. The funeral industry has got to agree on what a “simple” funeral should be and that every funeral director should give a price for those services only.

The second thing that should happen should be that funeral directors have the option of opting in or opting out at least twice a year. Therefore, if a national chain are particularly busy in December for example, there should be an easy way to take themselves off the DWP website so the family don’t have to wait weeks longer than they have to for a funeral.

The third point I will be making is that the payment system has simply got to be improved. My recommendation is that there has to be a facility for the funeral director to email their invoice and it should be paid within 14 days of receiving it. That way, we can book the day and the time of the funeral and the family doesn’t have to find the deposit.

The fourth is that there absolutely must be accountability. The report heard of families who after telling arrangers in national chains that they were applying to the DWP for help, were still presented with bills between £5,000 – £6,000.

If you have said you will undertake a “simple” funeral for £1800 for example and then present a bill of £5,000 I think it is fair that the company would be barred from advertising their services on a government website.

I have spoken to funeral directors up and down the country who agree that the following encompasses a “simple funeral” and doesn’t marginalise small funeral directors or home funeral directors.

Professional services

A coffin

Removal of the person who has died

Taking care of the person who has died

An estate car to take the person to the crematorium or cemetery on the day of the funeral

A service in the crematorium or a graveside service at the cemetery

The appropriate number of bearers on the day of the funeral

We also think that the minister’s fee (vicar/celebrant/humanist) should be a disbursement as not all families want someone to take the service and the family want to do this themselves.

We have said an estate car because not every funeral director owns their own, more traditional hearse and it seems to be a trend that traditional hearses aren’t in favour at the moment.

This is our definition of a “simple” funeral and is what we would be proposing to both the Baroness and DWP.

However, I would personally like to take things a step further in light of the growing problem with funeral poverty. I would like to propose a national minimum funeral cost for a simple funeral as outlined above.

While I am all for a free market, the general public haven’t any idea of what a funeral costs. If you are on a low income and not necessarily in receipt of benefits, then what do they do? Still get into debt because they have been presented with a £5,000 invoice?

By having a national minimum, again, funeral directors can opt in or opt out of undertaking funerals for xxx price but at least families would know who they can do to for a funeral that is affordable to them.

Again, there has to be accountability if a funeral director was on some sort database and still gives someone an over inflated bill.

By recommending a national minimum, I genuinely think the funeral industry has done all it possibly can to help the public. From then on, the onus is on them to do their research.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t charge a fair price for our bespoke services. I know I certainly do because of the level of work involved for a bespoke funeral. If funeral directors don’t make a profit, we won’t survive to help more families. However, we simply must offer the funeral we know is affordable to the family that is sat in front of us worrying about a bill for thousands.

There are amazing funeral directors around the country already doing this, but not all.

The Government are looking very closely at funeral directors pricing costs and we need to be proactive. If we aren’t, legislation will soon follow. In fact, I think it is inevitable that it will and it is closer than we think. If we don’t do something significant now, perhaps it will be taken out of our hands.

If Government are looking at legislation, pricing and regulation you can be assured that your future and your business is going to be in the hands of the NAFD and SAIF. It is my personal belief that if we don’t band together now, that these trade associations will possibly try to marginalise home funeral directors, those without their own hearses, funeral directors who don’t hold a Dip.Fd for example, but are amazing funeral directors.

So a few points then before I go into these meetings.

Am I on the right track with the DWP proposals?

How do you feel about a national minimum price?

Does my interpretation of a “simple funeral” marry with yours?

I will fight as hard as I possibly can to make sure the DWP system is easier for the people it was designed to help and we are paid a fair price for the work we do. I will also fight like a tiger against any legislation or regulation that marginalises the smaller funeral director or home funeral director but I am just one voice.

I already have a few behind me but how many more troops can we rally? If the only way we continue to have a voice and a seat at the table of these meetings, I will happily start a new funeral directors association….in fact, this is already in the pipeline and hope to tell you more about it next week.

An army of voices is always better than a lone one and I can’t keep talking for and on behalf of funeral directors like me if we aren’t all in it together.

So in the words of Susan B. Anthony – “Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.”

What do you think?