4 SPECIAL REPORT

A death in the family is one of the worst things we have to experience.

Apart from our grief there is also often an undeserved feeling of guilt about not having given enough attention to the deceased.

We feel obliged to give them the best send-off possible.

But then you are hit with the shock of how much a funeral costs.

Just when people are already grieving the death, the rocketing cost of a funeral drives thousands into debt or leaves bodies unclaimed in mortuaries.

To make matters worse, the price they are asked to pay depends on a postcode lottery of variable charges depending on where they live.

South Lanarkshire’s Seniors Together group can take credit for being among the first to draw attention to the scandal of funeral poverty in 2016 when they asked the Scottish Older People’s Assembly to raise it with the then minister, Alex Neil.

He was pressed to organise a national review of funeral costs.

The results compiled by Citizens Advice Scotland were shocking.

Not only did they reveal that the prices being charged by councils had been steadily increasing by around eight per cent a year at a time when council workers’wages and general wages were being frozen, but also that the differences charged by councils varied enormously.

For example, the lowest cost of a burial in the Western Isles was £680 but was highest at £2716 in East Dunbartonshire.

But even just a few miles from there, in East Renfrewshire, it was only £715.

South Lanarkshire was above the Scottish average at £1883. Charges have continued to rise in many areas since then.

It was clear that many councils were using bereavement as a cash cow to subsidise other services.

Benjamin Franklin once said:“In this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.”

But how many of us would see a funeral as a legitimate form of taxation?

To their credit, the Scottish Government has reacted to the review by producing guidance on organising a funeral, urging councils to be more open about their pricing, and is proposing to increase the funeral allowance.

But the councils are responsible for their pricing and these changes will not go far enough in preventing people falling into debt at a vulnerable time or in allaying the stigma of those who find they cannot afford what they feel is a dignified funeral for a loved one.

I have not mentioned funeral director costs – they vary too.

The average total cost of a funeral in Scotland – council and undertaker – is around £4500. We have about 55,000 funerals a year so around £250 million is transferred from, often pensioners, to pay for a death in the family.

Is this a sensible or moral way for their money to be used?