Public health funerals

We have a legal duty to arrange funerals for residents who have died without funeral plans in place.

We try to locate relatives or friends of the deceased who can arrange the funeral first.

If no one can manage the funeral, we will:

register the death
arrange a simple ceremony (usually followed by a cremation)
organise the funeral with our appointed undertaker

Request a public health funeral

You can ask us to consider arranging a public health funeral.

Start now

Cost recovery

Any costs we pay towards a funeral are usually recovered from the estate of the deceased.

After funeral costs and debts are repaid, any assets left over will go to beneficiaries named in the will.

If the deceased person did not make a will, the rules of intestacy will be followed.

If there are no beneficiaries and the estate value exceeds £500 after paying debts, it will go to the Crown. The Government Legal Service Bona Vacantia section will try to trace relatives.

Available information

In response to the volume of Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) Requests received, the Council has made public all of its cases since 2020. We do not release information on active cases, even though the funeral may have occurred.

We will publish the information on this page in the future, when the release of information does not prejudice the work of the Council / Government’s Legal Section or would put the property at risk of theft and damage, so that we can fulfil our obligation under section 22 of the FOIA (future publication).

The following information is available:

year - the calendar year in which the funeral occurred
type - whether the funeral was a cremation or burial
name - the full name of the person who died (as recorded on their death certificate)
gender - the gender of the person who died (male/female/other)
age at death - the age in years of the person who died at their date of death
date of death - date that the person died (as recorded on their death certificate)
ward - the postal ward in which the deceased person's address was registered
date of funeral - the date that the funeral took place
cost - the cost of the funeral in pounds. This includes registering the death, coordinating with undertakers and organising the funeral details

To download the full dataset as a CSV file, click on the "Export CSV" button below

Exemptions

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 addresses have been redacted or withheld under the following two exemptions:

Section 21 - Information accessible to applicant by other means: a list of unclaimed estates is available on the Government website
Section 31(1)(a) – law enforcement: prevention and detection of crime