In January 2019 we repprted on figures that showed UK councils spent nearly £5.4m on public health funerals, commonly known as paupers’ funerals, in the 12 months to April 2018. The data came from Freedom of Information requests by insurance company Royal London, which 275 local authorities replied to.
The data on cost only told part of the story.
Birmingham City Council, as the largest authority with responsibility for funerals, came out as the biggest spender, but was it the biggest in terms of the rate of funerals?
The answer was "almost".
To weight this story we gathered the deaths statistics from the ONS (for England and Wales, the National Records of Scotland and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency.
Local authority level death figures for NI were only available for 2010 to 2016 so a median was calculated for those.
We found Birmingham City Council paid for a funeral for the equivalent of one in every 22 deaths in 2017-18.
Waltham Forest paid for a funeral for every 17 deaths and Hackney for one in every 21 deaths that year.
- XLS: Analysis of public health funeral spending compared with registered deaths in each authority
- ONS: Deaths registered monthly in England and Wales
- XLS: ortality statistics by local authority
- Spokeswoman, Birmingham City Council
- Paulette Hamilton, cabinet member for health and social care councillor, Birmingham City Council
- Spokesman, Local Government Association
- Table: Cost to local authorities of public health funerals in 2017-2018, top 10 authorities