Soaring cost of funerals forces poor to turn to loan sharks

Mirror exposes our ‘hidden’ blight

THE soaring cost of funerals is forcing hard-up families into the clutches of loan sharks.

The cruel blight of “funeral poverty” has also led some grieving families to delay burying or cremating loved ones for up to nine months, a Mirror probe found.

Around one in eight cannot afford a relative’s funeral and 90,000 families a year take out a loan.

Lindesay Mace, of the Down to Earth service, part of charity Quaker Social Action, said they support up to 700 people a year.

She said: “A client, and this won’t be a solo case, went to a loan shark and as a result was facing having to pay back that money within two weeks or they would have to pay double what they had borrowed.”

Ms Mace added of one woman: “She was potentially going to just not claim the body.”

A survey last month by insurer Sunlife found the average funeral now costs £4,417, up 62% in a decade and almost double 2004’s price. By the time professional fees, a headstone, flowers and other extras are included, it hits £9,493.

Some council-run crematoriums have hiked prices in the past year. Thornhill crematorium, run by Cardiff council, raised them 14.3% to £640 – 11 times the rate of inflation.

It comes as the Church of England agreed to use its resources to end the “cruel experience” of pauper’s funerals.

Rev Andrew Dotchin said people were being “punished for their poverty”.

He recalled being in the car park of a local authority crematorium where the family of someone having a pauper’s funeral were told they could not witness it.

A third of last year’s 4,000 public health funerals, as they are properly called, involved working families unable to pay. The Competition and Markets Authority has said it could set price controls on funerals, amid concerns hikes are “hitting people at their most vulnerable”.

Those on benefits can get aid in the Funeral Expenses Payment. But there are reports of long delays in cash arriving and big shortfalls.

It means some have to delay send-offs until they can find the rest and Ms Mace said: “We had cases where the funeral has taken place six, nine months after the death.”

Kate Woodthorpe, of Bath University’s Centre for Death and Society, said funeral poverty’s scale is unknown, adding: “Most families find a way, so it’s a hidden thing.”

Cardiff council said it had tried to “keep increases to a minimum” amid “unprecedented cuts”.