Council and Democracy

Issue - meetings

Response to Review of Crematoria Provision

Meeting: 23/05/2019 - Chesterfield and District Joint Crematorium Committee (Item 9)

Response to Review of Crematoria Provision

Decision:

RESOLVED –

 

1.   That the report be noted.

Minutes:

The Assistant Director – Commercial Services and the Bereavement Services Manager submitted a report to update the Committee on the Competition and Markets Authority investigation into the Funeral Director and Crematoria Services Sector, and advise Members of the position of Chesterfield and District Crematorium in relation to the concerns raised.

 

The purpose of the review was to decide whether any feature or combination of features of each relevant market prevents, restricts or distorts competition with the supply or acquisition of any goods or services in the UK. The report outlined the three priority items that will be investigated, accompanied by a summary on Chesterfield and District Crematorium’s position in relation to each. The three items were:

 

1.   How local Authority and Private Crematoria set their prices, range and quality, including the extent to which local authority crematoria set prices above the level necessary to recover costs.

2.   The profitability of local authority and private crematoria including an analysis of whether price increases can be explained by cost increases or investments in quality.

3.   Evidence of the proportion of customers that crematoria tend to attract from locations for which they are not the closest provider and investigation of whether in these circumstances, customers are making active choices based on quality and price.

 

The report also provided an overview of the actions taken to determine if the Crematorium met the needs of different religious and non-religious groups.

 

RESOLVED –

 

That the report be noted.

 

REASON FOR DECISION –

 

To ensure that Members are prepared to respond to the results of the market investigation and are reassured that management understand the concerns raised within the review and have acted accordingly.