From the Guardian recently:
Catherine Joy started BB Funerals in North London back in 2010. She offers a "direct" cremation funeral, one without any formal service, for a total cost of £969. It involves transport of the body, a private committal at the crematorium without a minister and the return of the ashes in an urn. The stripped-back approach means she makes very little: somewhere between £100 and £200.
"I think there's the potential to make a bit more profit in the years ahead," says Joy, who arranged around 100 direct funerals last year. "But, for me, there's a different motivation. I used to be a celebrant for a big company and I saw how funerals were done and worked out the mark-ups on coffins were at least 200%. I couldn't sleep at night if I did that. How could you do it to the little old lady who's struggling with her husband's funeral?"
Some small, high-street firms are now adding the direct cremation option to their price list, keenly aware of many low-income families' money troubles. Funerals on a Budget is the online offshoot of Harrison Funeral Home in Enfield, arranging a direct cremation for anyone in a 30-mile radius of London, for £975. And Click Funerals, a similar online spin-off from D. Hollowell & Sons in Blackpool, can carry out a direct funeral for £995 (depending on whether doctors' fees are necessary).
Lancashire-based Simplicita offers a direct cremation for £1,000 (again depending on doctors' fees). The business only took off in 2009 when owner Nick Gandon began offering his services online, and Simplicita staff now travel across England and Wales to arrange more than 250 direct funerals a year.
"We were thinking it would be the low cost that would attract people," he says. "But a large proportion of clients tend to be professional – barristers, teachers, doctors. It's people who want to do things differently, more simply. Many are going on to organise a meaningful get-together their own way."
Observing time-honoured traditions – large wreathes or horse-drawn hearse – can lead some families in some communities taking on debt to ensure a "decent" send-off. But there are ways to keep spending on extras at a minimum, like using the family home for a wake or asking friends to bring homemade food.
There is some government assistance. The Social Fund Funeral Payment provides £700 for expenses (along with some additional money to help cover burial or cremation fees), available to anyone receiving benefits, without any close relatives with sufficient savings.
But it can takes weeks to sort out, and the payment has not kept pace with inflation, so most of the time there remains a significant shortfall. Information at gov.uk/funeral-payments.
