If the death has occurred at home, the GP will issue the medical death certificate. They will either give this to you directly or you may need to collect it from the surgery. If the death occurred in a hospital you will be given the certificate by the bereavement office.
The death will need to be registered in the area where the death occurred, even if the death occurred a distance from home. We will be able to advise you on this.
Traditionally flowers are sent by friends and relatives to remember and form a tribute to the person who has died. These are usually arranged by us on your behalf, or delivered to us by the family florist. Either way, we usually remove the plastic, delivery bags and polythene wrappers to make the presentation on and around the coffin in the hearse more pleasing.
If the deceased had a favourite charity, you may want to ask people to donate money to a particular fund. We are very pleased to handle this for you, and will collect the funds, acknowledge receipt to each individual donor and send you a list of the donors and of the total received some time after the funeral. We work closely with many charities, and are quite used to dealing with donations.
If the death was not expected or if the coroner needs to be involved for any reason, then the deceased is usually taken to the Cornoner’s Mortuary or hospital. The coroner (and his officers) will decide whether to allow the doctor to issue a certificate, hold an inquiry or hold an inquest at a later date. The coroner’s officers will advise you and us about the timescale for the funeral. It is always sensible to contact us as soon as possible as we can advise and help you plan the date of the funeral even before the certificates are issued and arrange for the person to be brought into our care and a chapel of rest.
We find that the best way to inform people of the arrangements is to place a notice in the local newspaper or, if required, a national newspaper. We are pleased to help you with the wording for this and with the insertion.
Some individuals leave clear instructions to their family members regarding what form the funeral should take. We are pleased to talk to you about the different ways that this can take place. Roughly three quarters of funerals take the form of cremation, which requires a lot of paperwork. The remaining quarter take the form of burial which can include having a memorial stone placed on the grave. We are pleased to help you with these arrangements.