We’re a bit late to the party, as this came out last week, but we were prompted by a comment from a regular reader on another blog post (thanks Andrew!!)
We were delighted to see one of our Recommended Funeral Directors featured in a documentary on ITV. Poppy’s Funerals were described as ‘female-led funeral directors out to buck several trends in male-dominated industry’.
We like that!
Watch the full clip here.
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 is no longer involved in any way with the Good Funeral Awards, we parted company with Brian Jenner amicably last year.
We wrote about it in a post on the blog earlier this year. And Brian wrote about it on his blog too
We have no knowledge or understanding of the deliberations involved in arriving at a decision to name a Dignity offshoot the best in the country.
Rest assured, had we still been involved in the Good Funeral Awards, we would have strongly resisted handing such a valuable accolade to the marketing people at Dignity to emblazon on their website and include in their press releases.
It simply wouldn’t have happened.
Our record shows our feelings about Dignity PLC. We have written almost 50 blog posts over the years, making our thoughts very clear.
Today we feel it is essential to write another.
Yesterday’s announcement that the online-only, Dignity owned, direct cremation service Simplicity Cremations is now offering clients an attended ceremony at a Dignity owned crematorium for an all inclusive price of £1,895 references the fact that Simplicity Cremations was recognised as Best Direct Cremation Provider at this year’s Good Funeral Awards.
We are concerned that this might be misconstrued as an endorsement of some kind by the Good Funeral Guide CIC by anyone who missed the announcements of our withdrawal from the organising of the awards.
It is not.
We do not endorse Dignity’s calculated attempt to step in as a solution to the issue of funeral poverty by offering their services at a rock bottom price.
We consider funeral poverty to have been very much contributed to by the bloated price increases charged year on year by Dignity PLC and other funeral providers following their business model.
We do not endorse the fact that, in areas where Dignity own a crematorium, local people looking for a low cost funeral will now find that the best price for a funeral service is offered by a company also owned by Dignity.
Meanwhile, families from the same areas preferring to use a local independent funeral director to assist them will be charged among the highest fees for cremation*, making the overall cost to these families for similar services disproportionally higher.
How is this fair to bereaved families?
*(Across the UK, the highest cremation fees are charged by Dignity crematoria. See the 2016 report from Beyond here, showing 9 out of the 10 highest priced UK crematoria are Dignity owned.)
How is this a level playing field for small independent funeral directors? For small business owners trying to compete in a market where the cremation fee charged to their clients appears to be vastly higher than that charged by Dignity to clients choosing an ‘Attended Funeral’ from their wholly-owned Simplicity Cremations service?
Here’s an example.
If you live in the Oxford area and want a funeral on a day and time of your choice at Oxford Crematorium (owned by Dignity), and you use a non-Dignity owned funeral director to help you, the cremation fee you will be charged is £1,070 (plus, potentially, doctors’ fees of £164).
If you instead choose the Dignity owned Simplicity Cremations, the full price you will be asked for for the entire funeral service, including cremation fee and doctors fees is £1,895. You can choose the date and time to suit you.
This means that Simplicity Cremations (aka Dignity PLC) is willing to provide all the remaining funeral directing services, including the collection of the person who died, their care, dressing them and taking them to the crematorium on a day and at a time of your choice for just £661.
How is this possible? While there are obviously savings to be made by dealing with bereaved families by phone rather than in person, the remaining services surely come at a greater cost than £661? The only way that we can think that this can make financial sense is that the cremation fee element is not £1,070 for clients engaging Simplicity Cremations rather than another funeral director.
Is this the case? If so, this is not acceptable.
We do not endorse Dignity crematoria offering differential prices to clients of Dignity funeral services, (whether trading under the online Simplicity Cremations name or the locally named high street Dignity branches).
We do not endorse bereaved families being unfairly penalised for choosing a funeral director that is not also owned by the owner of a crematorium in their locality.
We will be writing to the Competition and Markets Authority** to enquire how this situation sits with them.
We suggest anyone who shares our concerns does the same.
**The Competition and Markets Authority ‘promotes competition for the benefit of consumers, both within and outside the UK. Our aim is to make markets work well for consumers, businesses and the economy.’
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 doing so far.
More information about the FCC is below, but for now, we’d like to ask for your help if you are a celebrant who carries out funeral ceremonies.
One of the aims of the FCC is to obtain some realistic statistics. There is very little data about funeral celebrancy, so we are running a survey to try and gather accurate information.
The link can be found here – https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/FuneralCelebrancySurvey2018 and it takes less than 10 minutes to complete.
You don’t need to give your name or identify yourself in any way, but your input will help us build a picture of what is happening out there in funeralworld.
Thanks very much in advance!
About the Funeral Celebrancy Council
The Association of Independent Celebrants
It’s been twenty five years since the inspirational Ken West MBE opened the very first natural burial ground at Carlisle cemetery, and here at GFG Towers we felt that this landmark anniversary needed to be acknowledged. Members of the Good Funeral Guild felt so too, and, under gentle pressure from Stephen Laing we have co-opted fellow Guild members Emma Curtis and Sarah Weller to help us organise a celebratory day to commemorate Ken’s achievement at the beautiful, iconic Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey on Sunday September 9th, between 10.00 and 17.00.
Since 1993 when the very first natural burial took place, over 300 sites around the UK have been opened, and countless thousands of people have chosen this gently, environmentally responsible alternative to cremation or traditional burial. Despite this, natural burial lags behind in the statistics, being the choice of only around 1% of the population, which we think is a real shame. We’d love to help raise awareness of natural burial generally, so this celebratory day is a starting point for us. Watch this space for further developments.
In the meantime, the event on Sunday 9th September will be open to everyone to attend, with an opportunity to explore the fabulous historic Brookwood Cemetery as a bonus. The London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company was established in 1852 to provide ‘a great metropolitan cemetery situated in the suburbs, large enough to contain all of London’s dead for ever’, in response to great public concern about the state of London’s cemeteries. Two years later, Brookwood Cemetery was opened and the London Necropolis Railway ran between Waterloo station and two private stations in the cemetery, carrying coffins and mourners directly into the cemetery grounds. Since then, over 240,000 people have been buried here, and the cemetery is a hidden wonder of beautiful landscaping, quietly fading memorials and mausolea, immaculate military cemeteries and gems such as the only Zoroastrian cemetery in Europe and the St. Edward Brotherhood, a small Orthodox Christian monastery.
Set in the heart of Brookwood Cemetery is the natural burial area, Gillian’s Meadow, and it is here that we will be gathering to commemorate the establishment of natural burial as a viable alternative to the existing funeral choices. The Open Day will run from 10.00 until 17.00, and along with the ceremonial tree planting, there will be activities throughout the day to encourage guests to explore incorporating nature and ritual in their end of life decisions.
Death cafe picnics will run alongside rustic crafts, mandala and garland making, story telling,message writing and a ‘Time to Altar Grief’ installation, there will be a book tent where you can browse through all kinds of books on death and funerals, a chance to meet and chat with people working in the funeral industry who can answer any questions you might have, an opportunity to see a grave prepared for a natural burial, and Sound in the Woodland. We will also be offering Forest Bathing walks, allowing the opportunity to learn about the healing benefits of being among trees and nature, in the perfect setting. Bring a picnic and a rug and come and spend the day immersed in the beauty of Brookwood.
It will be a wonderful day, commemorating a hugely important movement inspired a quarter of a century ago by the brave innovation of Ken West and Carlisle City Council. We’ll be inviting all of the UK natural burial site owners and operators to come along and join us in acknowledgement of Ken’s influence, as well as local dignitaries and friends of Brookwood Cemetery. Members of the Good Funeral Guild will be coming along too, and the day will be open to the public to come and be part of.
Oh, and there will be cake. Lots of cake. With a very special centrepiece cake created by Conjurer’s Kitchen.
Details about Going Green at Brookwood can be found on Facebook here.
An open letter to SAIF, the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors from Cara Mair, Director, ARKA Original Funerals, sent 4th May 2018.
Dear all at SAIF
I write this to you as a longstanding member of SAIF, in the hope that you will not see this letter negatively, but more as a positive tool to allow you to look at how SAIF can move forward. I hope that this letter will begin a dialogue on how the training that you offer can be more inclusive and how, at the heart of this training, should be the empowerment of the community that we serve. Where we find ourselves today in this fast-changing society let us be the disruptors and not the disrupted. To be truly bold and take leadership in this area and create a legacy that other independent funeral directors can build upon.
I have worked in the funeral world since 1998, beginning my days as a chauffeur/bearer at the Co-op in Brighton. After that experience, I trained as a freelance embalmer and worked with many funeral directors across the South East. My first hand experience of working in this secretive funeral world was dismal and I was adamant that I would stay in this profession and make a difference. In November 2003 ARKA Original Funerals opened in Brighton and since then things have changed in the funeral world and there have been many reasons for this. From The Natural Death Centre and The Good Funeral Guide showing how we as a community can be more involved. To forward-looking, inclusive funeral directors such as ARKA, Green Funeral Company etc and of course technology allowing the public to be far more informed re choice and insight into the funeral process. All of these factors have been key to increasingly making a difference ensuring that funeral directors are held more accountable for the way that we work. I also believe that there are many things that would not have changed in the funeral industry if it were not for pioneers like those mentioned above.
With twenty years’ experience, I know of many people and organisations working within this industry who could put a comprehensive training programme together that would benefit us all. There is more and more discussion about how being more involved with the care of the deceased can help people through the grieving process. The communities that we serve should have the right to be supported in caring for their dead and not be ‘protected’ by the ‘professionals’.
I attended the AGM of SAIF in Brighton in March this year. The whole experience was very disappointing. There was also much disgruntlement about how SAIF was representing us all. To focus on pre-paid funeral plan selling as a way to secure your business in the future is an extremely narrow viewpoint. This is such a blinkered vision of how things could proceed. These plans are marketed so aggressively and instead of empowering the public to take control of decisions (as they’re so often marketed as) they are instead further disempowering people and misinforming many. This whole process is contemptible scare mongering and I am sure that you know that you will not keep up with the big boys in this area.
What I find so disheartening was how you totally dismiss the progressive movement that is happening, both with new independents opening up and also individuals supporting funerals in new ways. To move SAIF forward and to mark independent funeral directors distinctly apart from the corporates is to be outstanding in the quality of support we can offer in the way that we work and present ourselves. To work in a refreshing empowering way that the corporates cannot compete with.
The training that you offer, as you are probably aware, is out of date. You focus on what you can sell rather than what you can give. You come from a stance of protecting yourselves rather that empowering others. Your training should include how we communicate to the public by looking at changing the use of the language that is bandied around and more insight into how we can offer permission to people to be involved in looking after their own dead.
There is really nothing that sets you apart from the corporates in the public eye. You dress the same. You put false value in things such as cars. You are secretive. You pay no importance to the collection and ‘care of the deceased’.
I propose to you that your training should be developed to include a natural way of looking after a body and to become more creative in looking at the role of the Funeral Director in the 21st century. Here’s how it could be achieved.
Each organisation should have a representative who would be knowledgeable, capable and willing to support families with a more hands on approach in looking after their dead. This representative could also support the other staff that you have to ensure that the environment is supportive and safe.
Believe me, this will not only help your organisation, but will also give much more work satisfaction to the people that are involved in your company and you will feel prouder of the support that you can offer.
This letter comes from a place of caring and of concern that what you stand for will rapidly disappear if you do not drastically change what you are doing and how you represent others. I ask that you seriously consider the points I have raised and not hide from what needs to happen.
I am up for a conversation, to go through these points and to find some solutions as to how you will still exist in a more empowering way for both the public and your members within this fast-moving landscape.
I very much look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
Cara Mair
Director, ARKA Original Funerals
We’ve been pondering on an important subject.
In 21st century Britain, many of us may not have seen or spent time with the body of someone who has died. We may not have witnessed the profound absence of person in the familiar features of a corpse, nor experienced the thoughts and emotions of being in the presence of a dead person.
Death has become increasingly separated from our busy lives, most frequently occurring in hospitals or hospices, rather than at home surrounded by a family keeping vigil.
Most dying people are thus set apart from the rest of us, and once death has occurred, their bodies are usually collected by a funeral director, who keeps them in their custody until the date of the funeral. Our dead no longer stay among us.
Spending time with our dead has become something that needs to be arranged by appointment, usually in the unfamiliar surroundings of a ‘chapel of rest’ at an undertaker’s premises.
In addition, in recent years, the incidence of ‘no funeral’ funerals has risen, with a large increase in the number of direct cremations. Often this means that the body of the person is not encountered again at all, not even in a closed coffin.
We’ve decided that we would like to learn about this separation between the living and the dead. We think there’s something significant happening and, as far as we know, nobody is examining it.
If you could let us know about your own experience, this will help us begin to compile a picture of where our relationship with our dead is in 2018.
We have compiled a short, anonymous survey that takes just a few minutes to complete – the link to it is here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/OurDead
We’ll publish the findings here on the GFG website.
Depending on what we discover, the results even encourage more scholarly academic types to instigate some formal research into the changing shape of connection with our dead.
Thank you in advance
Team GFG
There’s something afoot in funeral world. Letters have been pinging into the inbox of funeral directors around the country advising them of a shiny new entrant into the world of undertaking.
“Over the next few days you may read about a new funeral company called Hospice Funerals LLP. It has been set up by St Margaret’s Hospice of Somerset in order to allow local hospices to extend their care to the local community by providing a caring, transparent and personal funeral service..”
A joint operation between St. Margaret’s Hospice and Memoria, this partnership is, at first glance, a match made in heaven.
Expert end of life carers join with expert provider of state of the art crematoria and low cost funeral services to offer communities across the UK a new, better alternative when it comes to funeral arrangements.
But let’s take a closer look.
Memoria’s CEO, Howard Hodgson, is well known in the funeral world. Here’s a little background, taken from an article by Tony Grundy in 2015:
‘For example, in a classic UK television documentary some years ago, former undertaker and entrepreneur Howard Hodgson told of how he led the transformation of the industry through a combination of acquisition, consolidation, value innovation and cost management. In his book ‘How To Become Dead Rich’ Hodgson set out his vision of how to run his funeral business as economically as possible, with an efficient set of local operations providing up to several funerals in a day, making much better use of facilities such as cars, storage and sales facilities. Alongside this he pioneered a more extensive range of services, optimising the average price.
This hugely widened operating profit margin and increased return on net assets. This vision became the model of the Great Southern Group, which Hodgson sold out to and which, after a period of being owned by US company Service Corporation International, is now called Dignity, one of the UK’s top players. These changes also reduced competitive rivalry in the UK market, where a higher proportion of the market had previously been fragmented, made up of ‘mom and pop’ independents.’
St. Margaret’s Hospice announced their plans earlier this month, without mentioning their new partner. The role of funeral director was advertised at £36,000 plus car. One of their existing charity shops is being converted into suitable premises in Taunton – a town in which there are already 12 other undertakers.
The Hospice Funerals website states:
HOSPICE FUNERALS’ VISION
To provide all hospice communities with the choice and experience of hospice funeral services that uniquely reflect the dedication, warmth and reputation of the hospice movement – an extension of exemplary hospice care – caring, transparent and personal.
HOSPICE FUNERALS’ MISSION
To bring choice, quality and affordability to families in our communities, so that they can celebrate the lives of loved ones with a unique and individual funeral that respects their wishes. This is achieved by only engaging highly trained staff with unwavering attention to detail and compassion – so ensuring a caring, transparent and personal funeral to all whatever their budget.
This sounds absolutely wonderful.
Although the top benefit for hospices electing to become a provider listed in another part of the website is:
‘Participation in a new enterprise that will deliver sustainable and growing income going forward and thus helping to bridge the considerable funding gap that stands between government funding and the annual needs of the hospice.’
And in the brochure for ‘hospice partners’ it clearly states:
The partnership will operate as a franchise scheme. These are the facts:
Hmm. So, perhaps not quite so in line with the hospice movement set up to look after the dying and their families by Dame Cicely Saunders then.
It’s a franchise scheme, dressed up in the hospice’s clothes, making money for both the ‘hospice partner’ and Memoria alike.
Here’s what we think.
It’s hard to criticise the idea of the much loved local hospice continuing to care for those who have died after death (albeit charging for this part of their service, while everything else until the last breath is taken has been free of charge.)
Why wouldn’t you choose to use them?
Hospices are pillars of the community after all, caring for the dying in the most wonderful way. And your money will be going to help support this admirable cause instead of lining the pockets of those men in black, the stereotypical undertakers.
It’s easy to see what a brilliant idea this is – piggybacking on the reputation and respect held by the hospice to give an immediate advantage over the funeral directors who are so widely and relentlessly pilloried in the media as greedy, money-making vultures who prey on the vulnerable bereaved.
With the helpful assistance of the self-serving life insurance companies generating fear of soaring funeral costs in their annual cost of dying reports, and the media focus on funeral poverty (driven by high charges from corporate funeral businesses including Dignity, Howard Hodgson’s baby, plus austerity cuts and shortage of space impelling local authorities to keep raising the cost of cremation or graves), funeral directors en masse are tarred with the same brush.
The public won’t take much persuading to look elsewhere for help with organising a funeral. And it’s available to everyone, not just hospice patients – again, from the Hospice Funerals website:
‘It is important to note that it is intended that everyone needing the services of a funeral director will be able benefit from the caring, transparent and personal service offered by Hospice Funerals. Therefore, our services are available to everyone in the community – irrespective of whether or not they have been a hospice patient.’
Well, not quite everyone.
This from Howard Hodgson’s letter to funeral directors yesterday:
‘The Directors of Memoria have no desire to compete with its funeral directing clientele. Therefore, in order to prevent a conflict of interest, it has been contractually agreed that NO Hospice Funeral operations will be set up within a 20 MILE RADIUS of ANY existing MEMORIA crematoria.
This agreement will be on going and so will prevent funeral directors within the declared 20-mile exclusion zones from facing this new competition now or in the future.
We hope this act demonstrates our loyalty and gratitude to ALL of our funeral directing clients, whose close working relationship we highly value.’
Nice of him to consider how funeral directors might feel about this idea, although only the ones who operate in the vicinity of one of Memoria’s crematoria. The rest of the funeral world is clearly fair game.
What concerns us about this genius return to the world of funeral provision by Howard ‘How To Become Dead Rich’ Hodgson is what it will do to the wonderful, dedicated, desperately hard-working, ethically run, generous, kind and principled undertakers who have devoted their lives to starting up and running small businesses to serve their communities.
They are everywhere, working day and night to do the absolute best for the families they care for, often living hand to mouth and struggling to stay afloat as the corporate companies relentlessly target them by opening branches nearby. Many of them can be found here on our recommended funeral director list. We applaud and salute them for what they do, and we fear for their future with this latest new player in the game.
These really good people don’t have the massive marketing budgets to pay for TV advertising and PR campaigns, unlike Dignity, Co-operative Funeralcare and now Hospice Funerals, but they are providing vital services for their communities. And they are offering real, informed choice.
Hospice Funerals could spell the end for many of these artisan, genuine, small undertaking businesses, people who have been battling against the corporate expansion into funerals for years, as money men have scented the opportunity to get rich by taking advantage of economies of scale. The Hospice Funeral idea is likely to be a pressure too much for many if it spreads around the country.
If this idea were vision-driven, altruistic. non profit making, a real community venture motivated by a genuine desire to really make a difference to our society , we’d respect it, we’d be completely behind it and we’d be promoting it as far as we can reach.
But it’s not, it’s a clever, clever commercial move.
Maybe the public, those who volunteer and fundraise and support their local hospices might see it for what it is, but probably most people will just think it’s a great idea and not give it any more thought.
And sadly, we expect that the advent of this new hybrid beast is likely to be greeted with delight by hospices around the country as a means of generating the much needed income to keep them afloat. Without thinking about the wider implications.
We’ll find out tomorrow – it’s on the agenda at two high profile hospice meetings, the Hospice UK National Conference in Liverpool and the Legacy Foresight Workshop in London
We’ll be at both events.
The team at Full Circle Funerals
Another category attracting many strong nominations and entries, the title of Best Modern Funeral Director reflects a growing change in the funeral sector to a more contemporary approach to funeral arrangements.
The judges looked at all aspects of the companies that were shortlisted including their online presence, and were very impressed by all the candidates.
One of the runners up was chosen for their innovative and holistic approach to funeral directing, and their successful establishment in the community where they work. The other was chosen for their fresh and community focused approach and their modernising take on traditional undertaking.
The winner was chosen in acknowledgement of the extensive research and planning carried out before opening, the care and thought that went into the ethos and the ‘look’ of the business, and the dogged persistence and belief in what they are doing in an area dominated by traditional style funeral directors which is now paying off as they continue to succeed.
The Winner of Best Modern Funeral Director is – Full Circle Funerals
Runners Up – Dandelion Farewells and Bewley & Merrett
Category sponsor – The Natural Death Centre Charity
The 2017 Good Funeral Awards were generously sponsored by Greenfield Creations
This category attracted a number of strong entries, with 11 finalists ranging from traditional to more unconventional businesses. The judges believe that it is essential that any future regulation of the funeral industry does not place barriers in the way of newcomers, as it is the emergence of new innovative thinking about how to do funerals that is driving the funeral sector forward.
There are two runners up in this category, both successful start-up businesses by funeral directors who have worked for large companies and wanted to have a more personal, involved and reactive role.
The winner was selected for their unique, contemporary, open and bespoke approach, their professionalism balanced with creativity and compassion, blending to give a fresh new approach to undertaking.
In their own words;
‘It is clearly important that we keep our service flexible, adaptable, creative and truly meet the needs of our client, rather than giving a blueprint of what we think that a funeral should be and look like.’
Winner – Compassionate Funerals
Runners Up – Crescent Funeral Services and O’Dwyer Funeral Directors
Award photograph by Jayne Lloyd
The 2017 Good Funeral Awards were generously sponsored by Greenfield Creations
The funeral world is not known for being overly environmentally friendly, with large hearses and limousines travelling slowly to the place of committal. It is heartening therefore for there to be entries in this category, albeit with only four finalists.
The runner up in this category uses earth friendly coffins only, everyday transport rather than a hearse, and garden sourced flowers rather than imported shop bought arrangements.
The winner of the most eco-friendly funeral director is addressing the issue of reducing emissions in the industry in a number of ways, through digitalizing their company procedures as much as possible, providing information online to reduce print costs, and perhaps most importantly through their development introduction and regular use of their Eco hearse and accompanying family car.
By leading the way for traditional funeral directors to think innovatively about their carbon footprint, this company deserves to be applauded and widely recognised.
The Winner is Leverton & Sons
Runner Up – Woodland Wishes
Award photograph by Jayne Lloyd
The 2017 Good Funeral Awards were generously sponsored by Greenfield Creations
