Funeral poverty: What happens when you can't afford to die?

Life’s only certainty is its inevitable end. But increasingly, many people can’t afford to die. As funeral costs stretch household finances to breaking point, the price of doing so is increasingly beyond many people’s means. 

The result is a loss in dignity, a great deal of distress and an inability for those left behind to properly grieve.

Paul could not afford a funeral when his father died. His application for government assistance was rejected even as funeral directors demanded thousands upfront. Already grieving, he faced the humiliation of being unable to bury his father. 

Karen, meanwhile, lost both parents within six weeks. Unable to afford two funerals, she became increasingly depressed. She says that only after receiving financial assistance could she “sleep at night and grieve properly”.

Both of them turned to Quaker Social Action for support.

Lindesay Mace, co-manager of the charity’s Down to Earth funeral poverty service, describes funeral directors “refusing even to collect the deceased person, let alone wash or dress them, or allow a family to spend time with them until they have received payment”. Some relatives, she says, have reported their loved ones being “left on a slab or stuck in the freezer for weeks. In some cases, months” because they could not afford the fees. “That really causes people a lot of distress and guilt and shame. Funeral poverty can rob people of their ability to grieve,” Mace says.

These are hardly isolated cases. According to SunLife’s 2026 Cost of Dying Report, a simple attended funeral will set a family back an average of £3,828. Fifteen percent of those arranging funerals struggle to pay this; of these, 70% report an impact on their mental health. 

“People are facing increasing pressures, and you can see that in our figures,” Mace says. Down to Earth has supported 6% more people this year, even though death rates in England and Wales are approximately 2% below last year’s levels. 

Yet funerals remain a fragmented private market. Rachel Bradburne, a funeral-sector policy specialist, raises concerns about the growth of direct cremation and what she describes as “a disposal service” emerging at the cheapest end. 

Read more:

• UK funeral poverty hits record high
• Help with funeral costs: Know your options
• Funeral poverty: Can you afford to die?

“What we are witnessing is once-in-a-generation structural change in a sector,” she warned in the National Association of Funeral Directors’ 2024 annual review. While direct cremation is not inherently undignified, poverty can remove choice, reducing a final farewell to a transaction dictated entirely by cost.

There are perhaps some lessons to be learned from Scotland. Holyrood has introduced broader eligibility for funeral support and a statutory Funeral Director Code of Practice (though funeral poverty persists there too). 

Elsewhere in Britain, the government’s Funeral Expenses Payment helps eligible families with burial or cremation costs but caps its contribution towards most other expenses at £1,000. Mace calls this “woefully inadequate”. 

Councils in England and Wales are legally bound to conduct a burial or cremation in the absence of family. Yet Mace describes public health funerals as a “postcode lottery”.  Some councils allow families to attend and return ashes; others impose restrictions. Quaker Social Action’s A Patchwork of Provision report uncovered significant inconsistencies between constituencies. So what needs to change?

“All funeral care should be safe, secure and dignified,” Bradburne says. 

Stricter regulation would be welcome, too. The David Fuller Inquiry exposed failures in mortuary security after Fuller sexually abused the bodies of more than 100 women and girls. More recently, the discovery of 35 bodies and unclaimed ashes at a Hull funeral home raised further questions about oversight. 

For families struggling to afford a funeral, the absence of consistent oversight creates another vulnerability: they may well have little choice but to go with the cheapest provider, with no knowledge of the standards of care they can expect to receive.

The industry acknowledges the problem. “Currently, anyone can set up a funeral directing business and there is no requirement for them to work to a minimum set of standards,” Terry Tennens, then chief executive of the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors, warned as far back as 2018. 

Andrew Judd, chief executive of the National Association of Funeral Directors, agrees: “There remains no statutory oversight of the funeral sector. This needs to change.”

However, regulation alone cannot make funerals affordable.

Quaker Social Action wants the £1,000 allowance raised to £2,259, with eligibility broadened along Scottish lines. “The Funeral Expenses Payment needs to cover the cost of a simple attended funeral,” Mace argues. The charity also wants minimum standards for public health funerals, guaranteeing attended ceremonies, access to ashes and respect for burial wishes.

Marie Curie has likewise called for “a social security system fit for providing a basic and dignified funeral for all”, which we currently do not have.

Yet improving standards without driving prices higher presents its own challenges. Nor can funeral poverty be tackled in isolation from the wider cost-of-living crisis. 

“The causes of funeral poverty are connected to the causes of child poverty, food poverty, housing and so on,” Mace says. “No type of poverty can be seen in a vacuum.”

For families already struggling with rent, bills and the cost of feeding themselves, the death of a loved one can mean financial catastrophe. Better government assistance and tighter regulation might ease the burden, but neither addresses the underlying problem: a society in which millions have so little financial security that even death can push them into destitution.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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