Bath & North East Somerset Council understands that losing a loved one can be a difficult and upsetting time. Our staff are available to help you through the whole process. Most people retain the services of a Funeral Director to help them arrange the right ceremony for them, and to deal with the process, freeing them from the paperwork & procedures at an emotional time.
Please consider long and hard before deciding to arrange a funeral for a close friend or relation. Remember that it is a Funeral Director’s job to make everything happen with apparently effortless ease. It is not generally as easy as it looks, and when you are emotionally involved and upset is not the best time to find this out. There will in any case be a number of things that you have to do without taking on more.
Having said this, it can be a very rewarding experience to feel that you have personally organised everything necessary for this last goodbye, rather than leave it to strangers, however sympathetic and competent.
Before you start, you need to make some decisions. These are usually made before death, and are frequently based on the wishes of the deceased. There are 2 key choices:
- Burial or Cremation
- Type of Service (religious, humanist, your own - see Funeral - Cremation for more information, including timing, etc.)
If you have time to plan in advance, so much the better. You can contact all possible sources of help, so that you know what you are letting yourself in for, where to go and what to do.
You may still need the services of a Funeral Director in a limited way.
For example:
- if the death occurs in hospital, will you need someone to collect the body from the mortuary?
Or
- if the death occurs at home, do you have the facility to store the body until the funeral?
Some Funeral Directors are happy to provide such limited services, although you may need to telephone a few to find one that does. A list of local Funeral Directors is available from Haycombe office.
Your first step towards arranging the funeral itself is to contact the crematorium office to make a booking for a service time. You will need to make it plain that you are arranging the funeral yourself, because we do not usually accept bookings other than through a Funeral Director. A Funeral Director makes the booking once he is sure that he can provide a hearse, cars and bearers at the required time.
At the same time you should make an appointment with the Registrar of Births and Deaths. The appointment must take place at least 48 hours before you hope to have the funeral.
A coffin will be needed.
- Staff at the crematorium may be able to offer advice regarding possible suppliers.
- They will also advise you of types of material that cannot be allowed into the cremators for environmental and safety reasons, if you wish to construct the coffin yourself.
- There are specialist suppliers where ‘green’ or customised coffins can be obtained.
- If a coroner is involved, as is usually the case in a sudden death, a death abroad or an accident, the coroner will issue a Coroner’s form 6. This replaces both a Registrar’s Certificate of Disposal and the Medical form i.e. you will not need either of these if a coroner has issued a form 6. The coroner is often consulted, so there is no cause for concern – it does not mean that there is anything ‘wrong’ or out of the ordinary. If a Coroner is involved, the Registrar will not give you a green form when you go to register the death, instead a Coroner’s form 6 will be issued and sent direct to the crematorium, or you may have to collect it from the coroner’s office for a burial.
- Otherwise, the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths will issue you with a Certificate for Burial or Cremation, a green form otherwise called a Disposal Certificate, when you go to register the death. The Disposal is one of three statutory forms required by the medical referee before he/she will allow a cremation to take place, or if a burial is to follow the funeral, it is the only form required by the Burial Authority.
The other forms are available from Haycombe office, although your GP may have a ‘Medical’ or forms 4, 5 & 10 (usually incorporated into one document).
- A Preliminary Application form – this is where you give all the details necessary for the funeral itself e.g. minister’s name, music – CDs or organist, wheelchair needed, etc., etc. It is not a statutory form and will not be sent to the medical referee, but it is a most important form as it contains the information to enable the funeral itself to run smoothly. (A form giving an undertaking that the coffin and its contents will not include certain materials will also be needed - Funeral Directors complete these annually.)
- The Application form ‘1’ is a statutory form and must be completed by the executor or the next of kin. If there is neither, anyone may apply for a cremation to take place, but they must explain clearly why they are doing so on the form and it will be up to the medical referee to decide if he/she will allow the cremation to take place. Care should be taken over deciding on an applicant for cremation as only the applicant will have the right to direct what happens to the cremated remains i.e. no-one else will be able to collect them or witness their burial or make any decision about them. The reverse of the preliminary form must be completed by the applicant for cremation too. If no decision about eventual disposal has yet been made, opt for hold. The crematorium will hold them for a month free of charge.
- The Medical (so called because it is three forms in one, all signed by different doctors) or forms 4, 5 & 10 must be completed by the doctor attending during the last illness (form 4), and by a doctor from an entirely different practice (form 5), who must talk to someone other than the form 4 doctor who was present at the death or during the last illness. (Form 10 will be signed by the medical referee, when he has scrutinised all the papers sent to him daily by the Cremation Authority.) There is a charge for this service, each doctor receiving a sum fixed by the BMA . Ask at your local surgery.
It is the responsibility of the person organising the funeral to deliver all of these forms to the crematorium office at least 48 hours prior to cremation.
There is a cremation fee payable to Bath and North East Somerset Council when the papers are brought to the office. The cremation fee includes:
- The cremation itself.
- The medical referee’s fee.
- The services of an organist and/or use of CD facilities.
- A certificate of cremation (needed if the remains are to be taken away).
- The cost of interment in a shrubbery (our equivalent of ‘scattering’).
For a burial only the Disposal and a Bereavement Services Application form is required. The application form can be obtained from the main office.
Burial
The forms for burial are much simpler. You simply need to liaise with cemeteries staff who will supply you with the relevant application form, talk you through the funeral and burial and show you the areas available for burial.
The Disposal form (see above) obtained from the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Death's office is the only other form required.
However, there are three costs involved if you wish to purchase right of interment in a family grave (i.e. a grave where no-one else can be buried other than with the consent of the owner of these rights). The cost of the right of interment, the cost of the burial itself and should you wish to erect a memorial the cost of the right to erect a memorial.
Green burial
Burial at Sea
Additional advice is available via a Government website.
The cemetery and crematorium office is open 8.30am - 4.30pm, Monday to Friday, with the exception of an hour from 10.30am until 11.30am every Thursday morning. It is not open at weekends or Bank holidays.
An answering service operates outside of normal office hours. All messages, emails, and on-line submissions will be dealt with, at the latest, during office hours the next working day.
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