Why a growing number of people are planning not to have a funeral
David Bowie was cremated ‘without any fuss’, an option that’s now a popular choice, reports Sam Dean
Amid all the fanfare surrounding David Bowie’s death last year, it was front-page news that he had chosen not to have a funeral. “Bowie’s been secretly cremated,” screamed one tabloid newspaper, revealing that the musician wanted to “go without any fuss” and had insisted there should be no public memorial.
Bowie had instead been “directly cremated” in New York, without friends or family in attendance. In a direct cremation, the body is taken straight from the place of death to the crematorium before the ashes are returned to the family.
As in life, Bowie was ahead of the curve. Although they represent only around 5pc of all cremations in the UK, direct cremations are an increasingly popular option.
Dignity, the UK’S only listed funeral company, last year launched its own direct cremation service in response to the heightened demand, while others have shifted their focus almost entirely towards this new breed of service.
Among them is Pure Cremation, which converted from a more traditional funeral company into a direct cremation-only business in August 2015. “We have really picked up on the fact that this could prove to be a very significant niche,” says co-founder and director Catherine Powell.
“In our first month as a dedicated company we did 18 direct cremations. Now we will probably serve more than 1,200 families this year.”
Powell envisages further growth, especially when she looks towards the US, where around 40pc of all cremations are direct. She believes there are “hundreds of thousands of families” who are unaware this option exists.
One of the key arguments made in favour of direct cremations is that it allows the family to say a more personal and less formulaic farewell to their loved one. And, Powell says, “there has always been a segment of people that just don’t like funerals”.
But equally vital, if not more, is the cheaper cost. Just as the interest in direct cremations is rising, so is the price of a traditional funeral.
According to the latest Sunlife Cost of Dying report, funerals have more than doubled in price in little more than a decade. The report found that the cost of dying is rising faster than any other fixed cost in the UK, including rent, insurance or food, with the cost of the funeral jumping by 5.5pc in a single year. The average funeral in the UK now costs £3,897, more than double what it was in 2004.
Alison Crake, the president of the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD), says this is partly due to “significant” rises in the cost of cremation and the burial, so the price hike is not just attributable to funeral directors themselves. However, there are ongoing concerns about practices within the industry, which Dignity chief executive Mike Mccollum says is becoming increasingly competitive.
“The funeral sector is unregulated, so it is very easy to set up a new business,” Mccollum told The Daily Telegraph. “We have seen, over many years, the number of funeral directors continue to rise, with more vigorous competition in the sector. It is a very fragmented market, and is fragmenting the whole time.”
The ease with which anyone can create a funeral business makes it difficult to give exact numbers, but the NAFD has about 4,000 members. It is thought there could be at least 1,000 more outside the association.
Dignity is pushing for the industry to be regulated. It recently commissioned a report by independent consumer group Fairer Finance into the prepaid funeral planning market, which found that a “perfect storm” is brewing of misleading sales practices, made easier by a lack of consumer understanding.
Sales of prepaid funeral plans grew by more than 350pc in the past decade, with more than 210,000 plans sold last year. Some of the providers of these plans have agreed to be overseen by the Funeral Planning Authority, the organisation created by the industry to monitor the prepaid plan business, but Fairer Finance found that it is “struggling to keep on top of the growing number of conduct issues”.
Among those issues are a failure to tell customers that the cost of a funeral often exceeds the cover offered by prepaid plans, aggressive sales practices and a lack of protection for consumers. The report goes as far as saying there is “significant evidence of mis-selling within the industry and that millions of pounds worth of consumers’ money could be at risk”.
Calls for regulation are being supported by the NAFD, and the decision now lies with ministers. Change could be coming.
Underpinning it all is a general shift in what people want from a funeral.
“Funeral directors now offer a broader range of services,” says Crake, who has worked in the industry for 38 years. “When I first started it was very much about the death of the person, but now it is more about their life. Funerals are more like social events where people are gathering. They are more of a celebration of life.”
The key shift, Crake says, was the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Her funeral at Westminster Abbey in 1997, was seen by more than two billion people on television and featured a speech from her brother, Earl Spencer, and a performance from Sir Elton John. “What we saw was unprecedented,” Crake says. “We saw an increased desire for family involvement in the funeral itself, with a more personalised service and approach.”
As the old saying goes, death is one of the certainties in life. What remains uncertain, in a fast-changing landscape and a fragmented industry, is what happens next.