A “workable solution” is needed to deal respectfully with up to 300,000 sets of unclaimed ashes across the UK, the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) has said. The organisation said keeping large numbers of uncollected cremated remains can result in problems for funeral directors who do not have enough storage space to hold them.
The organisation said while it has no exact figure, its research suggests somewhere in the region of between 250,000 and 300,000 sets of ashes remain unclaimed. Reasons for this are varied, the NAFD said, from family disputes, to illness, a desire to inter two sets of ashes together, or that a grieving relative is struggling with the decision to collect ashes.
The Law Commission has undertaken a consultation on reforming the law around burial and cremation and has proposed a deadline to collect unclaimed ashes before they are returned to a crematorium. It stated: “If the applicant does not respond within four weeks, the funeral director should be able to return the ashes to the crematorium, and the crematorium should have a duty to accept them.
“The crematorium would then be able to bury or scatter the ashes under its existing powers. “This provisional proposal would apply retrospectively, that is, to ashes which are currently unclaimed and in funeral directors’ possession, as well as to those which are not collected in the future.”.
A report with final recommendations is expected at the end of this year. The NAFD said it agrees with the overall intention of the commission’s proposals but said four weeks may not be a long enough period and suggest extending this to eight weeks at a minimum.
