What we do not do
We cannot promise you a date until three other people have agreed to it
The certifying doctor, the cemetery or crematory, and whoever is leading the service.
A funeral needs a permit, and a permit needs a registered certificate, and a registered certificate needs a doctor's signature that is not in our gift. On top of that the cemetery has a diary, the crematory has a queue, and your clergy has a Sunday. Any one of the three can move a date by two days.
We will give you the honest range and tell you what it is waiting on, and we will tell you the same day it changes. What we will not do is give you a date to be reassuring and then take it away, which is how a family ends up ringing relatives twice.
The three who have to agree, in this order
Each one waits on the one before it, which is why the order matters as much as the list.
First the certifying signature, because the registration waits on it, the permit waits on the registration, and nothing can be buried or cremated without the permit. Second the cemetery or the crematory, which has a diary, a queue, and rules about which days it will open a grave. Third whoever is leading the service, who has a week of their own.
Any one of the three can move a date by a couple of days. The third moves it most often, because it is the one families settle last, and the first is the one nobody can influence at all.
What to do about it
What we do instead of giving you a date
A range, what it is waiting on, and a telephone call the same day either of those changes.
We give you the range we actually believe
Not a comfortable one. The real one, with the thing that would change it named out loud, so you can hear how solid it is.
We tell you the same day it changes
In both directions. A date that has become likelier is worth a telephone call too, and it is the call people forget to make.
We say which of the three is the loose one
Where two are settled and one is not, we say which, and what happens if it does not come through. That is usually the whole of the uncertainty in one sentence.
We ask you not to announce it until all three have agreed
Ringing the family twice is the part everybody remembers afterwards, and it is almost always avoidable by waiting one more day.
We will tell the relatives ourselves if you would rather
A short call from us saying it is expected in a particular window is a much easier call to make than the same one from a son.
How to recognise it
What a less honest version of this looks like
A date given early is given to be kind, and it is the single most common way a family is let down in this trade.
A day offered before the permit exists
Ask what has already been agreed and by whom. If the certifying signature is not yet in, then nothing has been agreed by anybody and the day is a hope.
A range that only ever gets shorter
Real ranges move in both directions. One that improves at every telephone call is being managed rather than reported, and you may say so.
Silence between the calls
No news is not the same as no change. Ask when you will next be told something, and expect to be told on that day even when the answer is that nothing has moved.
It makes for a worse first conversation and a much better week, and that trade is the whole of the argument on this page.
The paperwork page sets out the order the steps actually go in, which is the thing any date is standing on. It is worth ten minutes on the first day.
- The paperwork, in order — The medical certification, the registration, the permit, the copies, and who does which.
- We do not decide the cause of death — The first of the three, why it cannot be hurried, and what we do while it is outstanding.
- Death certificates — What the certified copies are for and how many the family is going to need.
The rest of the argument
One argument in nine parts
Each of these is a place where a family is told less than it needs to know, by somebody, in an ordinary week. They are on separate pages because they come up separately. They are the same argument.
The other eight
If you have relatives waiting to book travel
Ring and we will give you the honest window and what it is waiting on, so that what you tell them is something that will still be true tomorrow.