Saying goodbye to loved ones: 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 drive down the cost of send-offs for loved ones, new research reveals.
The price of a basic funeral, covering cremation or burial, a funeral director, 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 year before, as more bereaved families opted for a budget cremation without a service during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, new rules required funeral firms to exhibit a clear rundown of prices on their premises and websites from autumn 2021.
‘The continued fall in funeral costs may, in part, be down to certain trends from the days of lockdown remaining popular, even after the pandemic,’ says Mark Screeton, boss of financial services firm SunLife which carries out an annual study on the cost of dying.
‘Direct cremations, for instance, are a cheaper alternative, and became necessary during Covid-19. Yet we’ve seen their levels relatively unchanged since.
‘Recent regulation from the Competition and Markets Authority has also ordered funeral directors to display prices on both their premises and website – which wasn’t required before 2021.
‘Some funeral directors told us that, as a result, they’ve reassessed and reduced their prices.’
Funeral directors have to show a standardised price list which must include the headline price of a funeral, plus the cost of individual items and related products and services, following a clampdown by the Competition and Markets Authority.
From summer 2021, it banned payments to incentivise hospitals, palliative care services, hospices and care homes or similar institutions to refer customers, and ended the practice of soliciting for business through coroner and police contracts.
Crematorium operators are also now required to provide certain price information to funeral directors and customers.
Some 88 per cent of funeral directors support the new regulations, and 63 per cent think the industry has improved as a result, according to the SunLife research.
However, it found that despite the fall in the price of a basic funeral last year, inflation pushed up total costs for families wanting a full-scale send-off.
That includes a memorial, death and funeral notices, flowers, order sheets, limousines, the venue and catering for a wake.
And these extra expenses, plus hiring a professional to administer an estate, pushed up the overall cost of dying by 3.8 per cent to £9,200 last year, found SunLife.
‘The fees and extras associated with funerals are moving in line with the rising prices we’re seeing in most other areas of our lives,’ says Screeton.
This trend is notable in the price of services involved in sorting out an estate, if these are needed.
New rules requiring funeral firms to be clearer about prices contributed to an overall reduction in the cost of a funeral in 2022, according to SunLife
Although professional fees fell in 2021, they jumped 10.9 per cent to £2,578 last year, and made up 28 per cent of the total cost of dying figure for 2022.
Meanwhile, there was a marked increase in direct cremations during the pandemic, and they continued to make up 18 per cent of funerals last year. Some 57 per cent of funerals were traditional cremations and 25 per cent were burials, also unchanged from 2021.
A ‘direct cremation’ is conducted with no funeral service and mourners, but ashes are returned to a family afterwards, allowing them to organise a personal memorial at a time of their choosing.
SunLife says the drop in funeral costs occurred in eight out of 10 UK regions, with only Northern Ireland and Wales seeing a price rise last year.
But Northern Ireland is still the cheapest place to hold a basic 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 biggest annual increase
SunLife has carried out surveys of funeral costs since 2004, and has only seen prices fall in the past two years. Over the past 18 years it has recorded a 116 per cent rise in costs.
It conducts interviews with 100 funeral directors – 10 per region of the UK – and interviews around 1,500 people who were involved in organising a funeral over the past four years.
How do you cut the cost of a funeral?
Some 90 per cent of funeral directors say people spend more money than they need to, especially on flowers, the coffin and limousines.
STEVE WEBB ANSWERS YOUR PENSION QUESTIONS
Their tips on making the process easier if you have to organise a send-off for a loved one were get quotes from a few firms, don’t try to please everybody, don’t rush decisions, and remember that you’re in control of the funeral.
With hindsight, people who have held a funeral advise bereaved families to talk to loved ones about what they want, avoid spending too much on the coffin or embalming, feel unafraid to ask funeral directors questions, take time and don’t be pressured into going over budget.
SunLife surveyed people on how they chose to cut costs in 2022, and listed the following ways they made funerals more affordable:
Chose a cheaper coffin – 18 per cent
Spent less on flowers – 17 per cent
Had a home wake – 16 per cent
Did not embalm – 13 per cent
Didn’t use a hearse/limousine – 12 per cent
Shopped around for the best price – 11 per cent
Didn’t use order of service cards – 10 per cent
Opted for a direct cremation – 7 per cent
Chose a cheaper cremation time – 5 per cent
Asked the funeral director to use fewer pall bearers – 4 per cent
