The funeral profession

Overview

Although most people don’t like to dwell on it, the fact is we all require a funeral at some point. This means the UK funeral industry is big business, with an estimated 4,000 individual companies performing over 600,000 funerals annually. Between us, we spend over £1 billion a year organizing funeral services for our loved ones.

The UK funeral market has two major players, Co-Operative Funeral Care and Dignity, who together conduct about a third of all British funerals. The rest are mostly enacted by local, family-run firms, although many of these have become franchises of the big two.  

Undertaking tends to be viewed differently from other trades, with some practitioners considering it more of a calling than simply a job. Expertise in the profession is still often handed down through families, which is why many undertakers are suffixed by the words “& son” or, increasingly, “& daughter”.

The industry has been invigorated in recent years by the arrival of new types of funeral firm offering special services, such as green burials or funerals with a particular theme. All in all, the British funeral sector is caring, dynamic and innovative, and seeks to provide customers with the best assistance and advice at what it recognizes is an extremely difficult time.