14 COUNCIL DUTY Making the final journey

Facts revealed on paupers’ funerals

Over £25,000 has been spent by South Lanarkshire Council on paupers’ funerals in the last decade.

Local authorities have a duty to make f u n e r a l a r r a n g e ment s f o r a n y b o d y wh o d i e s w i t h i n t h e i r boundaries where the deceased has no f amily or where t he f amily are unable or unwilling to meet the costs themselves.

This is known as a public health, environmental or pauper’s funeral and £25,650 was spent on 65 of them over the last 10 years.

In South Lanarkshire t he costs were: 2004/05, £2700 for six funerals; 2005/ 06, z e ro ; 2006/ 07, £ 900 f or t wo f unerals ; 2007/ 08, £ 1800 f or f our f unerals ; 2008/ 09, £ 3600 f or eight f unerals ; 2009/ 10, £ 3600 f or eight f unerals ; 2010/ 11, £ 4950 f or 11 funerals; 2011/12, £3150 for seven funerals ; 2012/13, £5400 for 12 funerals; and 2013/14, £3150 for seven funerals.

Across Scotland, the amount spent by local authorities on the costs has risen by nearly 50 per cent since the last general election.

In a further indication of the effects of austerity, figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that the councils have forked out 47 per cent more on funeral costs in 2013-14 than in 2010-11.

In 2010-11 the 24 Scottish councils who responded to the FOI request s pent £ 271, 197. 36 on 472 publi c health funerals.

However in 2013-14 this figure rose to £399,153.90 on 479 funerals.

The r i se i n expenditure i s more pronounced when considering that the actual number of funerals has only risen by a small margin over the same period.

The FOI request asked councils for the amount of money that they had paid partly or wholly funding public health funerals.

Councils can redeem any costs they incur from the estate of the deceased so the request, in effect, asked for the net expenditure of each council.

B e c a u s e t h e c o s t o f p a u p e r s’ f u n e r a l s ha s i n c r e a s e d by more than the actual number of paupers’ f unerals, t hi s s uggests t hat more people are dying without l eaving sufficient funds to pay for their own funeral arrangements and that more families are having trouble with being able to afford burying or cremating their loved ones.

In turn this appears to be putting a greater financial strain on the councils who are expected to pick up the tab.

Across Britain as a whole there were 3495 paupers’ funerals in 2013-14 at a cost of £3.4 million.

This was 318 more funerals than in 2010-11, a rise of around 10 per cent when compared to 2013-14.

However the cost to the taxpayer increased by far more than this, up by 35 per cent from the £2.5 million cost in 2010-11.

Of the around 380 councils who were sent the Freedom of Information request, 71 either failed to respond or refused to issue any information.

This means that the actual cost to the taxpayer of burying those who cannot afford to bury themselves is likely to be higher.