Funeral costs (FOI)

​Request

The number of so-called paupers' funerals, where the cost is covered by the States as the family of the deceased does not have sufficient funds, that have taken place since 2000. A breakdown of the number of paupers' funerals in each year since.

Money spent on paupers' funerals since 2000. A breakdown of the amount spent in each year since.

Response 

Some background information has been included to explain the context of the information provided.

Income Support benefit has only been available since 28 January 2008. Before 2008, the parish halls administered the cost of funerals of people who died without estate, whose families could not afford to pay and or had no next of kin. These records are not held by the Social Security Department. 

Therefore, the information below relates to the period since 2008 when responsibility for these funeral payments moved from the parishes to the Social Security Department.

Administration of this benefit is managed through Income Support Special Payments and is available when the deceased, their estate, the executors and the family meet the established criteria. Special payments are one-off payments from the Social Security Department to help the most vulnerable in the community to cover the costs of emergencies or one-off situations. 

Funeral special payments, in particular, provide assistance for families at difficult, emotional and expensive times. They also ensure that the funerals of those people in our community without family or estate are managed in a compassionate and respectful manner. More information can be found at:

View Income Support

In 2014, the Social Security Department worked with funeral directors to ascertain a threshold for costs which provided a basic funeral service. Queries relating to what is included in this provision should be addressed to funeral directors directly.

The maximum amount payable as a special payment towards funeral costs has been £2,100 since January 2015. Payment is made directly to the funeral director on receipt of an invoice from them. The average special payment for funerals since 2008 is £1673.63.

The questions have been broken down into:

• the number of special payments for funeral expenses
  
• the value of special payments for funeral expenses
  

Both questions have been answered in the table below:​

Information not held:

As stated above the Social Security Department does not hold information in relation to this request for the years 2000 to 2007.