City spends £243k on ‘pauper funerals’

More than £240,000 was spent on “paupers’ funerals” in Edinburgh in a single financial year in the second-highest payout by a UK council.

Local authorities collectively spent about £4 million on such funerals in 2015-16.

Edinburgh City Council spent £243,667 on 247 public health funerals over the course of the year.

Only Birmingham, at £694,534, spent more out of any city council across Britain.

Fife Council came in fifth, with 82 funerals costing the authority £73,254. Perth and Kinross Council spent the sixth most money at £72,766.

Some 10 per cent of the payments for UK public health funerals came from Scotland where £479,056 was spent in total.

Insurer Royal London cautioned the list had been compiled from only those councils that provided the data requested. Some 211 councils contacted provided data on public health funerals for the financial years 2011-12 and 2015-16.

Louise Eaton-terry, a funeral cost expert at Royal London, said: “It is always upsetting when the deceased has no family to arrange a funeral or when their family simply cannot afford one.

“In these cases, local councils take on the responsibility of paying for a funeral and it’s evident that councils are facing increasing pressure to accommodate the rising number of public health funerals in the UK.”