Funeral director
One of twenty-three terms in the resource centre
A funeral director is the firm, or the person, that looks after someone who has died and arranges the funeral. In the UK anyone can act as one, and there is no licence, so the trade associations' codes and a firm's own record are what tell you how it works.
What a funeral director does
- Collects your loved one from the hospital, care home or house, and cares for them at a chapel of rest until the funeral.
- Obtains the papers: the certificate for burial or cremation from the registrar, the crematorium's forms, or the coroner's paperwork where the coroner is involved.
- Books the crematorium or the cemetery, the minister or celebrant, and the cars.
- Supplies the coffin, and arranges hygienic treatment, dressing and a viewing if the family wants one.
- Advises the family on what the options are and what each costs, and gives a written estimate before anything is agreed.
For a repatriation, the work is the same at both ends, plus the consulate, the legalisation and the transport between the two countries. A firm that does repatriation as its main work will have done the country before; a local funeral director often passes the repatriation to a specialist, and it is worth asking who.
Read next
What a funeral director does in a repatriation, and what a specialist does, is in what a UK funeral director does in a repatriation. Whether you need one at all is in can a family arrange a repatriation themselves. Funeral directors who place the repatriation leg with us start on repatriation for funeral directors.
Related terms: Care before the funeral and Funeral costs. Every term, explained.
Someone answers, any hour of the day
Tell us where your loved one is and we will tell you what happens next, and what it costs.