00:00Okay then Nigel, what have you experienced in terms of delays since new legislation was brought in?
00:05Since new legislation was brought in, the process that used to take on average around about five days has now taken around about two to three weeks.
00:15And on one particular situation we had, a family had to actually wait six weeks, which is obviously exceptional.
00:22So the delay in the paperwork being completed to allow us to continue with our arrangement has increased quite a lot.
00:36I mean obviously it's a stressful time for families anyway, losing a loved one, but what's the impact of these delays on the family or what is a stressful time?
00:42The impact is mainly emotional. The first issue is that there's very little communication.
00:48There's no system of updating or tracking. So they get an initial call from the medical examiner's department, but then there's no other follow-up calls to say what stage the process is at.
01:04So families are having to wait in silence in a lot of cases.
01:12And then as a result of the delays that are happening, the nature does take its course when someone's passed away and families do wish to visit their loved one.
01:22But in certain circumstances, we have to recommend that they don't do that because of the length of time that's actually passed.
01:31Now clearly, if there's a delay like that, then the family are getting closure at a lot later time than they would have done previously.
01:40Families in many cases like to get their funeral arranged and out of the way so they continue the grieving process.
01:46But when you have delays of this length, it does extend the length of the grieving process and inhibits it to a certain degree.
01:54So what do you feel needs to happen?
01:57The process needs to have, there needs to be two things happen.
02:00The process needs to have some sort of a system of more regular communication and updates for the family.
02:06And secondly, the process needs to be speeded up a lot more so there's a minimal delay between a person passing away and the funeral director being able to continue the process of arranging and conducting the funeral.
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