Council pays £700,000 for ‘paupers’ funerals’
ALMOST £700,000 has been spent on “paupers’ funerals” by Birmingham City Council. The authority paid out the whopping amount in 2015-16, new statistics show.
It is more than any other local authority in the country, although Birmingham is the largest authority in the UK.
The money paid for a total of 376 public health funerals.
Councils across the West Midlands spent more than £900,000, the largest of any region in the country.
There were 582 paupers’ funerals in the region costing a total of £919,000 at an average cost of £1,580.
Local authorities collectively spent around £4 million on “paupers’ funerals” during that 12 months research by a mutual insurer has found.
Royal London, which made the findings after analysing freedom of information (FOI) responses from across Britain, said the number of public health funerals has increased by 12 per cent over the previous five years.
A public health funeral, also known as a pauper’s funeral, is held by a local authority when someone who has died has no family or the family is unable to cover the cost of the funeral.
The insurer said FOI data from 260 local authorities showed there were 3,784 public health funerals across Britain in the financial year 2015/16. The total cost of these funerals amounted to £4 million.
Royal London said the total cost of public health funerals to councils across the UK had increased by more than a third (36 per cent) over the past five years. Some 211 councils contacted provided data on public health funerals for the financial years 2011/12 and 2015/16.
Councils in the East of England had the biggest percentage increase in public health funerals in the last five years, at nearly 36 per cent, Royal London said.
It said those in the West Midlands faced the highest cost, with more than £900,000 being spent on these funerals in 2015/16.
Louise Eaton-Terry, a funeral cost expert at Royal London, said: “It is always upsetting when the deceased has no family to arrange a funeral, or when their family simply cannot afford one. In these cases, local councils take on the responsibility of paying for a funeral and it’s evident that councils are facing increasing pressure to accommodate the rising number of public health funerals in the UK.”
Councillor Izzi Seccombe, Warwickshire County Council leader who chairs the Local Government Association (LGA)’s community wellbeing board, said: “These tragic figures speak for themselves.
“It is a sad fact that there are thousands of people, mostly elderly, across the country with no family or friends to care for them or arrange, attend or pay for their funeral.”
Ms Seccombe added: “Public health funerals are a last resort and many people on low income are entitled to a social fund funeral.”
Royal London said the figures are based only on those councils that provided it with the data requested (some did not hold this information). In some cases, the cost of a funeral may have been recovered from the estate of the person who had died.