LISTEN: Moray and Highland facing some of the highest funeral costs
The average Scottish funeral will set you back around £3,500
Families across Scotland are still being hit with rising funeral costs, according to a new report from Citizens Advice Scotland, with Moray and Highland among the hardest hit areas.
The new report, The Cost of Saying Goodbye 2016, details the rising prices of burials and cremations in all of Scotland’s 32 Local Authorities.
This year’s report finds that:
• the basic cost of burial fees in Scotland (i.e. not including undertakers fees) is now on average £1,373 - an 8% increase since last year.
• There is still a postcode lottery in these charges, with the costs varying by over £1,500 between the most expensive and least expensive Councils.
• The most expensive is The City of Edinburgh, and the least expensive is still the Western Isles (for the third year running).
• Meanwhile the cost of local authority cremations is on average £670: an increase of 11% since last year, although in Moray this is OVER £930 and in Inverness it's nearly £850.
Moray has a privately run crematorium - like Dundee - with no local authority run alternative for some people to make other arrangements.