When direct cremation first arrived in the UK, it was a genuinely good idea: a simple, affordable way to handle the practical fact of a body, for families who didn’t want, or couldn’t afford, a traditional send-off. Plenty of excellent local funeral directors offer it themselves now, quietly and well, alongside everything else they do.
That’s not the version most people see, and most people are not practiced at arranging funerals for their loved ones.
Switch on daytime television and you’ll meet a different version of the same idea sold by national companies with call centres and prime-time ad budgets, where your mother is “collected,” “cared for,” and “delivered” by a logistics chain you’ll never actually meet. Think “burn and return” Amazon style. The rapid rise of direct cremation, with estimates from 3% (2019) to 21% (2025) has been accelerated by COVID, but now families are beginning to question this idea, for good reason.
A very recent survey conducted by the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF), reported in the Funeral Service Times in May 2026, found that almost 20% of people who arranged an online direct cremation for a loved one said they regretted the decision, the same proportion reported unresolved grief, and 25% agreed that attending a funeral is a critical psychological step in the grieving process. Even Mumsnet conversations show that people are wary of TV advertised promotions.
I’m a celebrant. My work exists because of the funeral directors I partner with, the ones who take a call at 9pm, who know which crematorium would be best, and who quietly absorb a cost rather than chase a grieving family for it. A striking number of people in this world came from other vocations, nursing, teaching, the police, not just jobs, me included. Every day I speak to people that really care.
What worries me is the idea that a goodbye is something you can subcontract to whoever’s cheapest on Google, with no one local who takes the trouble to get to know you, your family, or the person who’s died. A funeral, even the simplest one, does something really important: it takes scattered private memories and turns them into a single story that people can hear together, and marks an important moment of saying goodbye.
It’s an ancient rite of passage that we skip at our cost. Psychologists have found that people who carry out some kind of ritual after a death report measurably less grief afterwards, even people who don’t believe rituals “do” anything. And while how you do it will be personal to your own culture and beliefs, what’s important is that something meaningful is done to mark a death. Phoning an 0800 number is a not a rite of passage, it’s a transaction.
If someone you love has died and you’re weighing up the options, call a local, independent funeral director before you call a number from the telly. Ask what they offer. Most now do direct cremation too, simply and properly, alongside the option of marking the life when you’re ready. You’ll very likely find the same warmth and care, and quite possibly a fairer price than the advert promised.
The body doesn’t need any of this, but you do. Funerals are for the living, and the person best placed to help you get it right is almost never a call centre.