Undertakers might maintain ‘mass scatterings’ after 300,000 individuals’s ashes left unclaimed
Funeral homes and undertakers are being burdened with the ashes of loved ones in England and EALES after no one has come to collect them after the funeral has taken place
Undertakers say they are urn-fairly being left with loads of people’s ashes with 300,000 unclaimed after funerals.
The National Association of Funeral Directors say they estimate almost 300,000 people have been left unclaimed as they took part in a law reform consultation.
The Law Commission is seeking to make broad reforms to the law of burial and cremation in England and Wales.
It proposes that if a funeral director has not heard from the next of kin for four weeks they should have the right to return the ashes to the crematorium.
It said that such legislation should be retrospective to apply to all the ashes the funeral directors have accumulated over the years.
Matthew Uden, who runs of W. Uden and Sons, said his funeral parlours alone, which are based across south London, hold the unclaimed remains of about 200 people – some even dating back to the 1960s.
His oldest set of ashes are for a 68-year-old lady named Elsie Elanor Agnes Emler, who died on 15 April 1965 at Farnborough Hospital in Kent.
Apart from the Certificate of Cremation, there are no records of her or any recorded contact with her family.
He said: “I think the main reason is families don’t know what to do with them.
“I think they don’t have a definite plan, a definite route of what they wish to do with their loved one’s cremated remains.”
Rachel Bradburne, from the NAFD, said: “There needs to be something put in place going forward so the backlog doesn’t build up.”
She said solutions could include “mass scatterings” or events to properly handle their dispersal.
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