Direct cremation step by step: from the first call to the ashes

A direct cremation is the cremation on its own. There is no service at the crematorium and no one from the family is present when it happens. What you get is the collection of your loved one, their care until the day, the cremation, and the ashes returned to you. Anything the family wants to hold happens afterwards, with the ashes, wherever and whenever you choose.

Families choose it because it costs about a third of a traditional funeral and because it separates the two things a funeral bundles together: the practical work of the cremation, and the gathering of the people who loved the person. This guide follows the practical part from the first phone call to the day the ashes come back. If you are still deciding whether it is right for you, read is a direct cremation right for us first, or why families choose direct cremation in families’ own words. Direct cremation or a traditional funeral sets the two side by side, cremation or burial is for the decision before that one, and what different faiths say about cremation is for a family whose tradition has a view.

Step 1: the first call

You ring, at any hour, and we ask four things: where your loved one is now, whether a doctor has confirmed the death, whether the coroner is involved, and who in the family is making the arrangements. That last person is the applicant, the one who signs the cremation form, and it is usually the next of kin or the executor.

It helps to have three things near the phone, though none of them is essential on the first call: your loved one’s full name and date of birth, the name of the hospital, home or care home where they are, and the name of the GP or the ward that was looking after them. Everything else can be gathered over the following days.

From those answers we tell you what happens next and roughly when. If your loved one is at home, that means the collection is the next step. If they are in a hospital, the next step is the hospital’s bereavement office, and we tell you what it will ask you for. The first call is a longer account of that conversation.

Step 2: collection

Where your loved one is decides how the collection works.

From a hospital, the bereavement office must release your loved one before anyone can collect them, and it will only do that once the medical certificate is under way. That is usually a day or two. We collect from the hospital mortuary with the paperwork the hospital gives us.

From a home, a care home or a hospice, a doctor or a senior nurse has to confirm the death first. After that we can collect at any hour, day or night, and there is no charge for a standard home collection. If you need us within a fixed short window, that is an urgent collection and costs £250 more.

We tell you who collected your loved one, where they were taken and when they arrived. You will always know where they are.

Step 3: in our care at the chapel of rest

Your loved one is taken to one of our two chapels of rest, in London or in Nottinghamshire, and stays there until the day of the cremation. They are not moved again except to the crematorium.

This is also where a viewing happens, if you want one. A viewing is an hour with the coffin at the chapel of rest, for the immediate family, before the cremation. It is the one thing you can add to a direct cremation and it costs £150. There is no attendance at the crematorium itself, because that is what makes a cremation a direct one; the £150 hour is how families who want to see their loved one do so. Can you attend a direct cremation goes through exactly what is and is not possible.

Step 4: the paperwork

A cremation in England and Wales needs three documents before a crematorium will book it, and in Scotland and Northern Ireland the equivalents.

1. The application for cremation. You sign this, as the applicant. It confirms that you have the right to arrange the cremation and that no one with an equal right objects. We fill it in with you over the phone or by email and you sign it.
2. The registrar’s certificate for cremation. This is the green form you receive when you register the death. Without it nothing can be booked, so register the death as early as you can. In England and Wales a medical examiner reviews the cause of death before the registrar will see you; the examiner’s office rings you, and you book the registration once they have cleared it.
3. The coroner’s certificate, if the coroner is involved. When a death is referred to the coroner there is no green form. The coroner issues a certificate for cremation instead, after the post-mortem or the inquest, and the timetable in this guide stretches by however long that takes. What happens when the coroner is involved explains the stages.

We handle the crematorium’s side of this, and the doctor’s and coroner’s fees, where there are any, are the one cost that sits outside the £1,295.

Step 5: how the cremation works

Once the crematorium has the documents it gives us a date, usually within the week, and we tell you. You can ask for the date to fall on a particular day, and most crematoria will try, but a direct cremation is booked into the crematorium’s own schedule rather than into a service slot, which is part of why it costs what it does. The cremation happens at City of London Crematorium for London families and at Babworth Crematorium for Nottinghamshire and Doncaster families, so your loved one is cremated at the crematorium that serves the area they lived in.

On the day, your loved one is brought from the chapel of rest to the crematorium in the coffin they have been resting in. A card with their name travels with the coffin from the moment it leaves us and stays with it through every stage; this is how a crematorium guarantees that the ashes you receive are your loved one’s.

Before the cremation any pacemaker or similar device is removed, because it cannot go into the cremator. The coffin is placed in the cremator whole; it is not opened and nothing is taken from it. The chamber runs at around 800 to 1,000 degrees for between one and a half and three hours, depending on the person and the coffin. Each cremation is carried out on its own. When it is finished and has cooled, the remaining bone is reduced to the fine ash you are familiar with, any metal from surgery or dentistry is removed, and the ashes are placed in a sealed container with your loved one’s name and the crematorium’s certificate. How long does a cremation take, and when do you get the ashes is the timing of the day in detail, and what happens at a cremation service is the attended version, for comparison.

Step 6: the ashes come back to you

The ashes are ready within a few days of the cremation. We return them to you in a container or an urn, and we arrange the handover when we ring you to say the cremation has taken place. If you would like a particular urn, choosing an urn sets out the options and what each is for.

What you do with the ashes is entirely yours to decide and there is no hurry. Most families keep them at home for a while first. You can scatter them on your own land or, with permission, on someone else’s; in a garden of remembrance at the crematorium; or on water, where the Environment Agency asks only that you keep away from marinas and drinking water intakes. What to do with the ashes covers each option, and taking ashes abroad covers the documents if they are going to another country, and taking ashes on a plane the airline and airport rules.

Step 7: the gathering, when you are ready

A direct cremation does not mean there is no goodbye. It means the goodbye is not tied to a crematorium’s twenty-minute slot on a weekday morning. Families hold a memorial in a garden, a pub, a church or a front room, weeks or months later, with the ashes present or not, and with everyone who could not have made it to a funeral held nine days after the death. Planning a memorial service after a direct cremation is the guide for that day, and saying goodbye when there is no funeral is for the weeks before it.

What the £1,295 covers, and what it does not

The price covers the collection at any hour, the care of your loved one at our chapel of rest, the coffin, the cremation fee at the crematorium, the paperwork done with you, and the ashes returned in a container or urn. It is a fixed price, and it is the figure on the invoice. How much does a direct cremation cost sets it against the national averages, what is included in a direct cremation is the list item by item, and what is the cheapest way to be cremated in the UK is for a family for whom even this figure is too much.

It does not cover three things. A viewing at the chapel of rest, which is £150 and only if you want it. An urgent collection from a home, which is £250. And any doctor’s or coroner’s fee, which is set by them and passed on at cost. There is no service at the crematorium and no one from the family attends it, because that is the product; a cremation with a service is a different arrangement, which a local funeral director makes.

From the first call to the ashes coming back is seven to ten days when there is no coroner involved. Most of that is the paperwork in step 4, which is why the one thing you can do to shorten it is to register the death the day the medical examiner clears it.