A rising number of people are being buried or cremated by councils in England because they have no one to organise or pay for a funeral, a survey of town halls has found.
There was a 13% rise in a year in the number of “public health funerals” in the 2022-23 financial year, the Local Government Association (LGA) estimated, as costs to the taxpayer for the last-resort ceremonies rose to almost £6m a year.
