New Approach to Funeral Directing Celebrates First Anniversary

Jayne Prior opened her Independent firm of Funeral Directors on Chester Road on 25th November 2019 promising to bring a simple but fundamentally new approach to arranging funerals based on principles of Care, Compassion and Fairness. From the outset Jayne committed herself to deliver a service families wanted rather than what they were told they could have, little did she know that her personal challenge to change the face of funerals would also coincide with the impact of the worldwide pandemic. One year on we caught up with Jayne to ask her views on her progress and her experiences throughout such difficult times for families.

Jayne said, “Can I first acknowledge the devastating impact of the Covid pandemic on families, communities and businesses across the world but more personally across the Sunderland and North East region. We have seen at first hand the grief and loss which has been made even more difficult by significant restrictions on our ability to meet and comfort those seeking our help. I cannot begin to tell you how much I respect our customers who, in the face of their own grief, have extended the kindness and understanding to work alongside us and meet those additional challenges.”

So in the face of these difficulties we asked Jayne what her and her team had achieved in the first twelve months:

“I am delighted that we have been well received by families not only in Sunderland but across South Tyneside and Teesside. We have been able to show our professional levels of Care and broad provision from services without ceremony to large traditional services. Our families have readily identified our real compassion in understanding their grief and going the extra mile to support them through the process and I am happy that our open and honest pricing structure shows our commitment to Fairness in providing clear costs with no hidden extras.” We acknowledged the positive tone but asked Jayne to be more specific about what that actually meant for the business.

“Funeral services thrive on reputation and this means there are hurdles for new starters to become established, however, our success to date has meant that in July we opened a second funeral home in Eston,

Middlesbrough from where we can also offer masonry services, we have developed our merchandising both in shop and on-line and our progress has been acknowledged nationally as a finalist in the Aston Lark Rising Star Awards 2020. We are therefore confident that, thanks to the public, we are now in a strong position to grow and improve our services” Earlier this year the funeral industry came in for some criticism and a call for regulation following a review by the Competative Marketing Authority so we wanted to know how Jayne intended to meet this extra scrutiny. “The report did reflect on some historic aspects of the funeral service and I am pleased that the value of independent firm was evident throughout. We welcome the call for regulation as we want to be challenged to validate the standards we set for for our customers and also to show how we compare to others. We have not only successfully passed recent inspections by organisations but, when permitted, encouraged families to inspect our premises themselves. We are well placed to respond to the findings as these already reflect our principles or Care, Compassion and Fairness.

So how will Jayne Prior Funeral Directors celebrate a year of success. “We cannot turn our back on the events of the past 12 months and even with the prospect of an effective vaccine in the new year there is a terrible legacy for our communities to recover. Our only celebration is the thanks we have received from our customers and a strengthened resolve that our approach is better serving people at their time of need. We intend only to get better.”