COVID-19 Update (March 25th)

The current message from the Government is that funerals should continue, as far as possible, for now, but considering all of the guidelines issued for minimising the risk of transmission. This includes the need to protect at-risk groups, to avoid large gatherings of people, for good hand hygiene, the avoiding of unnecessary physical contact and maintenance of social distancing. This is not only for the benefit of those attending funerals, it also supports the urgent need to protect funeral, crematorium and cemetery employees, who need to remain healthy and able to work at this critical time.

We are still making funeral arrangements as normal as we can, but house calls are no longer available. At the moment we would ask clients to call into the funeral parlour to make arrangements, to limit the risk we would also ask a maximum of 2 members of the family do this. These will be by appointment only. A lot of the paperwork can more or less be completed over the phone and by email, this will be the preferred method. Likewise with meetings between the family and whoever is conducting the funeral, direct contact will be minimised and phone, email and facetime calls will be the norm

Remote registration is being practised. We can email the Death Certificate, together with some contact details for next of kin and some salient details about the deceased and the registration service will contact you.

Both The Church of Scotland and The Roman Catholic Church have decided to refrain from having services in their Churches. For a burial a small committal service would be available at the cemetery, attended by immediate family, as for a service at the crematorium these will be as normal but again recommended that only immediate family attend as to reduce risk. Restrictions are in place with permitted numbers varying between 20 and 5 attendees. This will be subject to change. Some crematoriums offer a webcast or recording service which will be very useful during this time as it means anyone with access to the internet will be able to watch the service without the need to attend, this is especially helpful for those who are self-isolating or in the high risk category.

 The health and wellbeing of our colleagues and clients is paramount to us and, as such, we continue to closely monitor updates on COVID-19 from the World Health Organisation, Scottish Government and Health Protection Scotland.