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Saying goodbye to loved ones: The price of a basic funeral fell 2.5% to £3,953 last year
A rule change forcing funeral directors to display price menus has helped lower the cost of shipping loved ones, new research reveals.
The price of a basic funeral, including cremation or interment, a mortician, doctor and minister or celebrant, fell 2.5 per cent to £3,953 last year.
That follows a 3.1 per cent drop to £4,056 the previous year as more bereaved people opted for low-cost no-service cremation during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, new rules required funeral homes to display a clear overview of prices on their premises and websites from autumn 2021.
“The continued decline in funeral costs may be due in part to certain trends from the days of lockdown that remain popular even after the pandemic,” said Mark Screeton, head of financial services firm SunLife, which conducts an annual survey of the cost of dying. .
‘Direct cremations, for example, are a cheaper alternative and became necessary during Covid-19. Yet we have seen their levels remain relatively unchanged since then.
Recent regulations from the Competition and Markets Authority have also ordered funeral directors to display prices on both their premises and their website – which was not mandatory prior to 2021.
“Some funeral directors have told us that’s why they’ve revised and lowered their prices.”
Funeral directors must present a standardized price list that must include the top price of a funeral, plus the cost of individual items and related products and services, after a restriction by the Competition and Markets Authority.
As of summer 2021, it banned payments to incentivize hospitals, palliative care services, hospices and care homes or similar establishments to refer clients, and ended the practice of soliciting cases through contracts with coroners and police.
Crematorium operators are now also required to provide certain pricing information to funeral directors and customers.
Some 88 percent of funeral directors support the new regulations and 63 percent believe the industry has improved as a result, according to SunLife research.
However, it found that despite the drop in the price of a basic funeral last year, inflation drove up the overall cost for families wanting a full secession.
That includes a memorial, obituary and funeral notices, flowers, order forms, limousines, the location and catering for a wake.
And this extra cost, plus hiring a professional to manage an estate, drove the total cost of death up 3.8 percent to £9,200 last year, SunLife found.
“The fees and perks associated with funerals are evolving in line with the rising prices we see in most other areas of our lives,” says Screeton.
This trend is noticeable in the price of services involved in settling an estate, if necessary.
According to SunLife, new rules requiring funeral companies to be clearer about pricing have contributed to an overall reduction in the cost of a funeral by 2022
Although professional fees fell in 2021, they rose 10.9 per cent last year to £2,578, and made up 28 per cent of the total cost of death for 2022.
Meanwhile, there was a marked increase in direct cremations during the pandemic, and they still made up 18 percent of burials last year. About 57 percent of burials were traditional cremations and 25 percent were burials, also unchanged from 2021.
A ‘direct cremation’ is performed without a funeral service and mourners, but the ashes are returned to a family afterwards so they can organize a personal memorial service at a time of their choosing.
SunLife says the decline in funeral costs was seen in eight out of 10 UK regions, with only Northern Ireland and Wales seeing a rise in prices last year.
But Northern Ireland is still the cheapest place to hold a funeral at £3,317, and London remains the most expensive at £5,283.
The cost of a funeral was highest in London, but Wales saw the largest annual increase
SunLife has been researching funeral costs since 2004 and has only seen prices drop in the last two years. Over the past 18 years, it has registered a cost increase of 116 percent.
It conducts interviews with 100 funeral directors – 10 per region of the UK – and interviews around 1,500 people who have been involved in organizing a funeral over the past four years.
How do you limit the costs of a funeral?
About 90 percent of funeral directors say people are spending more than they need to, especially on flowers, the casket and limousines.
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Their tips for making the process easier when you need to organize a farewell for a loved one were: get quotes from a few companies, don’t try to please everyone, don’t rush decisions, and remember that you’re in control. of the funeral.
In hindsight people who have had a funeral advise next of kin to talk to loved ones about what they want, don’t spend too much on the coffin or embalm, don’t be afraid to ask questions of the funeral director, take your time and don’t be pressured to go over budget.
SunLife surveyed people about how they chose to cut costs in 2022, and listed the following ways they are making funerals more affordable:
Chose a cheaper coffin – 18 percent
Less spent on flowers – 17 percent
Had a home wake – 16 percent
Not embalmed – 13 percent
Did not use a hearse/limousine – 12 percent
Shopped for the best price – 11 percent
Did not use a service card sequence – 10 percent
Chose a direct cremation – 7 percent
Choose a cheaper cremation time – 5 percent
Asked the undertaker to use fewer pallbearers — 4 percent
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