Funeral Expenses Payment: help with funeral costs on Universal Credit

A Funeral Expenses Payment is a payment from the social fund towards the cost of a funeral you are arranging, if you or your partner get Universal Credit or another qualifying benefit. Gov.uk also calls it a Funeral Payment, and it is sometimes called a funeral grant, although that is not an official name. It is made under Part III of the Social Fund Maternity and Funeral Expenses (General) Regulations 2005, the same regulations behind the Sure Start Maternity Grant. DWP pays it in England and Wales through its Bereavement Service, and the Department for Communities pays it in Northern Ireland. In Scotland it has been replaced by the Funeral Support Payment from Social Security Scotland, which has its own section below. The payment has two parts. The first covers the necessary costs of a burial or cremation, such as the cemetery or crematorium fees, with no fixed upper limit. The second is up to £1,000 for other funeral expenses. Gov.uk is clear that the payment will not usually cover all of the costs of the funeral, so it helps to know early what it will and will not pay. The regulations have not defined a funeral for claims made since 2 April 2018. DWP's guidance says a payment can cover the final burial or cremation and a single related ceremony held at or close in time and place to it, or, where there is no body, a single commemorative event. Only one payment is made for each death, and none at all if a Scottish Funeral Support Payment has already been made for the same person. You do not normally repay it from your own money: DWP recovers it from the estate of the person who died.

Yes. Universal Credit is on the list of qualifying benefits in regulation 7(4), and the regulation attaches no condition to it: no earnings limit and no minimum award. The tax credit routes in the same list, by contrast, only count where particular elements are included. So a working family getting a small Universal Credit top-up qualifies on the same terms as a family with no earnings. Gov.uk's current list is Universal Credit, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Pension Credit and Housing Benefit, and it says you might also be eligible if you get a Support for Mortgage Interest loan. DWP's claim notes also list Income Support and income-based Jobseeker's Allowance. The benefit can be yours or your partner's, and it must be awarded in respect of the date you claim the funeral payment. If you have applied for a qualifying benefit and are still waiting for a decision, gov.uk says you can still claim, but you must still claim within the time limit. If you get Universal Credit, gov.uk says you will not get a decision on the funeral claim until after your next Universal Credit payment. Your own savings do not matter at all. DWP's guidance for decision makers states that capital has no effect on claims for funeral payments, which makes this different from almost everything else connected with Universal Credit. What can reduce the payment is money from the person who died, such as their bank balance or an insurance payout, which the section on deductions covers.

The claim must come from the person responsible for the funeral costs, or that person's partner, and the regulations set out who that can be in order. First comes the partner of the person who died. If they had a partner at the date of death, the claim has to come from that partner, and only if there was no partner can anyone else claim. A partner means a husband, wife or civil partner, or someone they lived with as if married, in the same household. People are not treated as partners where one of them is in custody, detained in a high-security hospital, abroad beyond the temporary absence rules, or living apart with no intention of returning or for an absence likely to last more than 52 weeks. Gov.uk's example is a partner who lives abroad or is in prison, in which case a close relative or friend may be able to claim. A married couple or civil partners living in the same care home still count as partners, and so does a couple who were partners just before one or both moved permanently into one. If the partner dies before the funeral without claiming, the person who died is treated as having had no partner. Second, where the person who died was a child, the person responsible for the child, or their partner, can claim. A child here means someone under 16, or under 20 and treated as a child for Child Benefit, usually because they are in full-time education or approved training. This route is only open if there is no absent parent, or the absent parent or their partner was getting a qualifying benefit at the date of death. Third, for a baby stillborn after 24 weeks of pregnancy, a parent or a parent's partner can claim. Fourth, where there was no partner and neither of those applies, an immediate family member can claim, which means a parent, son or daughter. Last, a close relative or a close friend can claim. The funeral regulations define a close relative as a parent, parent-in-law, son, son-in-law, daughter, daughter-in-law, step-parent, step-son, step-son-in-law, step-daughter, step-daughter-in-law, brother, brother-in-law, sister or sister-in-law, and DWP's guidance adds that half-brothers and half-sisters count. That list belongs to funeral payments only and is not the close relative list used elsewhere in Universal Credit. A close friend is not defined. DWP's guidance says the depth of the relationship matters more than how long it lasted, and that a grandchild, niece or nephew, aunt or uncle, cousin, great-grandparent, or a husband, wife or civil partner who was no longer their partner at the date of death can count as a close friend. For family members, relatives and friends, it must also be reasonable for you to take on the costs, judged by the nature and extent of your contact with the person who died. If a close relative was in closer contact than you, or in equally close contact and neither they nor their partner gets a qualifying benefit, the claim fails. A close relative who falls into one of the exceptions in the family rule table below, such as someone under 18 or living outside the UK, is left out of this comparison. This is why gov.uk warns that if a close relative such as a sibling or parent is in work or not getting a qualifying benefit, you might not get a Funeral Expenses Payment: a parent can stop the claim under the immediate family rule below, and a brother or sister through this comparison of contact. You also need to have taken on the bill yourself. DWP's guidance says you or your partner must have a contractual liability with the funeral director, and a moral obligation is not enough. Its example is a son who arranges his father's funeral in his own name and pays the bill in full: his mother cannot then claim in order to repay him.

A claim from a son, daughter, other relative or friend usually fails if the person who died had a parent, son or daughter who was not getting a qualifying benefit at the date of death and was not estranged from them. This is the immediate family rule in regulation 8(1). It applies whenever the person responsible is an immediate family member, a close relative or a close friend, so it does not apply when the partner of the person who died claims. So if your mother dies and your brother, her son, is working, your claim can be refused even though he is not paying anything towards the funeral. The test looks at each parent, son and daughter of the person who died. One of them stops the claim if they were not getting a qualifying benefit at the date of death and were not estranged from the person who died. The regulation's wording about partners, 'those immediate family members or their partners', is ambiguous. The sensible reading, which matches the clearer wording of the close relative comparison in regulation 8(7)(b), is that a relative counts as being on a qualifying benefit if they or their partner gets one. Estrangement is about the relative alone, not their partner. Estranged has its ordinary meaning, alienated in feeling or affection, and DWP's guidance says it is judged from the point of view of the surviving relative rather than the person who died. Contact alone does not decide it: the claim form asks both whether they kept in touch and how the relationship had broken down. Several groups are left out of the test altogether, and the table below sets them out: anyone under 18, a qualifying young person for Child Benefit or Universal Credit, students in full-time education within set age bands, people getting asylum support, fully maintained members of a religious order, people in prison or hospital who, or whose partner, were on a qualifying benefit just before they went in, people in a care home whose costs the council meets at least in part, and anyone who normally lives outside the UK. You may not know what benefits your brothers and sisters get. DWP's guidance tells decision makers to check the department's own records as well as asking you, and the claim form asks about each surviving parent and child, whether they kept in touch with the person who died and whether they get a qualifying benefit.

The person who died must have been ordinarily resident in the UK at the date of death, you must live in England or Wales, and the funeral must usually take place in the UK. The condition that the claimant lives in England and Wales was added in 2019, when Scotland's own scheme was set up, so someone living in Scotland applies there instead. A funeral elsewhere in the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland is only covered where the person responsible for the costs, or their partner, has a particular status under the old EEA rules: an EEA worker or self-employed person, someone who has kept that status, a family member of one, someone with a permanent right to reside under those rules, or someone with settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme. Gov.uk's summary says the funeral can be in the UK, the European Economic Area or Switzerland, but the regulation is narrower than that. A funeral anywhere else is not covered. If you travel abroad for the funeral, your Universal Credit has its own rules on time away, and going abroad on Universal Credit explains how a death in the family can extend the time allowed. Northern Ireland has its own rule for funerals in the Republic of Ireland, covered in the Northern Ireland section.

The payment covers the necessary costs of a burial or cremation, plus up to £1,000 for everything else, less any deductions. Regulation 9 sets no overall cap: the amount is whatever the listed costs come to. The listed costs are a new burial plot and the right of burial in it, or the cost of reopening an existing grave, with the cemetery's burial fees and a private grave-digger's fees where necessary; for a cremation, the crematorium's fees and the fee for removing an implanted medical device, capped at £20 if a doctor does not do it; any medical reference, report or other paperwork needed for the burial or cremation; any documents needed to release money of the person who died that would be deducted anyway; transport of the body within the UK to the funeral director's premises or place of rest, where the round trip between there and the place of death is more than 80 kilometres (about 50 miles), less the cost of the first 80 kilometres; a hearse for the coffin and bearers and one other car from there to the funeral, on the same round-trip basis; and one return journey for the person responsible, either to arrange the funeral or to attend it. Necessary means the lowest cost that is appropriate for that person. DWP's notes say that where there is a choice of burial grounds or crematoriums in the local area, the rules usually only allow the least expensive, and if you choose a more expensive option you may have to pay the difference. Everything else falls within the £1,000. Gov.uk gives funeral director's fees, flowers and the coffin as examples, and DWP's guidance adds church or minister's fees, an organist, an urn and hygienic treatment. Any part of a burial or cremation cost that is not allowed as necessary can be met from the £1,000 instead, as long as there is room under the limit. Costs that arise only from the requirements of the person's religious faith are not part of the burial, cremation or transport costs, but DWP's guidance says they can be paid as other funeral expenses within the same limit. Burying ashes after a cremation is not covered as a burial cost. The £1,000 limit applies to deaths on or after 8 April 2020, when it rose from £700, and it has not changed since. You can arrange a funeral without a funeral director, and DWP's notes say you will then need evidence of what you spent. DWP does not publish an average award: its Social Fund account gives totals only.

A prepaid funeral plan cuts the limit for other expenses from £1,000 to £120, and nothing is paid for items the plan already provides. Under regulation 9(10), where items and services were provided under a plan, no payment is made for the listed costs it covered. DWP's notes explain what is left: the cost of listed items the plan does not cover, the part of the cost of items it only partly covers, and up to £120 for any other funeral expenses. Gov.uk's summary is that you can only get up to £120 to help pay for items not covered by the plan. Money from the plan itself is then taken into account. If the plan had not been paid for in full before the death, any sum payable under it is deducted. If it had been paid in full, any allowance the plan pays towards funeral expenses is deducted. The claim form asks you to send the plan documents with it. A plan you are paying into yourself is a separate matter: Universal Credit ignores the value of a funeral plan contract as capital.

Money from the person who died that your family can reach without probate, and lump sums paid because of the death, are taken off. Regulation 10 lists the deductions: any assets of the person who died that are available to you or a member of your family without probate or letters of administration; any lump sum due to you or your family on the death from an insurance policy, occupational pension scheme, burial club or similar arrangement; a funeral grant from public funds for someone who was entitled to a war disablement pension; and money from a prepaid funeral plan, as above. Your family here means people living in the same household as you, so money that goes to a relative who lives elsewhere is not counted. Much more is left alone. Arrears of benefits owed to the person who died, including Universal Credit, Personal Independence Payment, the State Pension and Bereavement Support Payment, are excluded from their assets. A Bereavement Support Payment you receive yourself is not on the deduction list. For claims made from 2 April 2018, contributions from charities, friends or relatives, and money raised through crowdfunding, are not deducted. Your own savings do not count. Money of the person who died only counts if it is available to you or your family: DWP's guidance gives the example of a mother arranging the funeral while the assets are claimed by the estranged wife of the person who died, and those assets cannot be deducted. Money in a joint account held as joint tenants passes straight to the surviving holder, so it is not an asset of the person who died and is not deducted. DWP's notes also point out that a bank or building society may pay the funeral bill from the account of the person who died if there is enough money in it.

No, not from your own money. Section 78(4) of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 says funeral payments from the social fund may be recovered out of the estate of the person who died and, apart from the general overpayment rules in section 71 of that Act, by no other means. DWP's notes say the law requires funeral expenses to be paid from the estate before anything else, even if that means other bills cannot be paid and have to be written off. Some things are left out of the estate for this purpose. Gov.uk says it does not include a house or personal things left to a widow, widower or surviving civil partner, and DWP's notes say it does not count the home occupied by the partner of the person who died, or personal possessions left to relatives. If you are due money from the estate, gov.uk says the payment will be deducted from it. Often there is nothing to recover. The Social Fund account for 2024 to 2025 shows £50 million of Funeral Expenses Payments issued, £0.7 million recovered, and £47 million of Funeral Expenses Payment debt written off because there was no estate to recover from. Where no estate or other asset is declared, DWP abandons recovery straight away.

Claim by phone on 0800 151 2012, or on form SF200 by post, at any time from the date of death until 6 months after the funeral. That time limit is in Schedule 4 to the Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1987, and gov.uk says you must apply within 6 months of the funeral even if you are waiting for a decision on a qualifying benefit. There is no online claim. The Bereavement Service helpline is 0800 151 2012, or 0800 731 0453 in Welsh, and Relay UK users dial 18001 then 0800 151 2012. Lines are open Monday to Friday from 8am to 6pm. The claim form itself says phoning is the easiest way to claim, and gov.uk says the adviser will also help you claim any other bereavement benefits you might be entitled to. You can claim before the funeral if you have an invoice or a signed contract from the funeral director. Gov.uk says it cannot be an estimate. DWP's guidance for decision makers treats an estimate signed by you as evidence that you have taken on responsibility for the costs, but it also says an estimate should not be used to decide the amount paid. Follow gov.uk, because the claim form says DWP cannot accept estimated bills and cannot decide the claim until it has the signed contract or final bill. If the bill has not been paid yet, the money goes directly to the funeral director. If you have already paid, it goes into your bank, building society or credit union account. DWP's notes ask you to tell the funeral director that you are claiming. If you disagree with the decision, it carries the same appeal rights as other DWP decisions. Gov.uk says you usually need to ask for a mandatory reconsideration first, and your decision letter will say if you can appeal straight to the Social Security and Child Support Tribunal. The guide to challenging a Universal Credit decision explains how mandatory reconsideration works.

Download form SF200 from gov.uk, fill it in on a computer or by hand, and post it free to Freepost DWP Funeral Payments, or take it to your local jobcentre. There are two versions. The adult form is for someone who died aged 20 or over, or aged 16 to 19 and not in full-time education, non-advanced education or training, and the child form is for everyone else. Each comes with notes, and Welsh versions are available. The current adult form is dated 03/26 and runs to 28 pages. You cannot fill in the PDF on a mobile phone or tablet, and if you use a pen it asks for black ink and capital letters. Someone else, such as a relative, a friend or an adviser, can help you complete it, but you must sign it yourself. The form asks about you and your partner, the person who has died, paying for the funeral, taking responsibility for the funeral, the funeral itself, the estate, any money available or due to pay for the funeral, and the account you want the money paid into. It asks whether the signed contract or final bill is in your name or your partner's name, and if it is not, why you are responsible for paying it. It asks about any other surviving parents or children of the person who died, as the family rule above needs. It also asks about bills not on the funeral director's invoice, such as flowers or a wreath, one return journey to arrange or attend the funeral, and any extra death certificates you needed to release insurance or other money. Send the final bill or signed contract with your name, address and National Insurance number written on it, receipts for anything else you are claiming, and the documents for any prepaid funeral plan. If you do not have the final bill yet, the form says to make your claim straight away and send the bill as soon as you can. If you need the form in braille, large print, British Sign Language or another format, DWP's notes give 0800 731 0469.

A Funeral Expenses Payment does not reduce your Universal Credit: it is ignored as capital for 12 months and it is not income. Paragraph 16 of Schedule 10 to the Universal Credit Regulations 2013 disregards any social fund payment made within the past 12 months, the same rule that covers a Cold Weather Payment. It is not income either, because regulation 66 lists the only kinds of unearned income that count, and social fund payments are not among them. A Scottish Funeral Support Payment is disregarded for 12 months in the same way, under paragraph 22, and so is the one-off Bereavement Support Payment lump sum, under paragraph 20. An inheritance is different, because money or property you inherit counts as your capital. DWP's guidance says that something left to you specifically in a will belongs to you from the date of death, and that a share of what is left over (the residue) counts as capital even before the estate is shared out, valued as a right to receive it. Executors do not have to distribute an estate until one year after the death in England and Wales, or six months in Scotland, but your share can count before then. Giving your share away by a deed of variation before the estate is settled may be treated as deprivation of capital. Savings over £6,000 reduce your award, and over £16,000 Universal Credit stops. Gov.uk says to report changes to your savings as soon as they happen, which is a change of circumstances like any other. Before the money arrives, the savings and capital calculator shows what a given inheritance would do to your monthly payment.

If you live in Scotland, you apply to Social Security Scotland for a Funeral Support Payment, not to DWP for a Funeral Expenses Payment. It replaced the Funeral Expenses Payment in Scotland from 16 September 2019 under the Funeral Expense Assistance (Scotland) Regulations 2019, and you cannot get both for the same funeral. You must be ordinarily resident in Scotland when you apply. The qualifying benefits include Universal Credit, Pension Credit, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance, Income Support and Housing Benefit, but the Universal Credit rule is different. An award of £0 does not count. On the other hand, an award for the assessment period before the current one counts as well as the current one, and any deduction or sanction is ignored when working out the award. There is no immediate family rule. Instead, Social Security Scotland considers whether someone else would be the nearest relative of the person who died, along with anything else you tell it. Mygov.scot says a nearest relative could be a partner, child, parent or sibling, and that if you are not the nearest relative you will need to explain why you have accepted responsibility. The payment is also built differently. It covers burial, cremation or hydrolysis costs, medical references and certificates, documents needed to release assets and reasonable transport costs, plus a flat payment of £1,327.75 in 2026/27 towards other funeral costs such as the funeral service or funeral car. If the person who died was 18 or over and left a funeral plan paid for in full, the flat payment is £162.05 instead. Mygov.scot gives an average total payment of £2,065, a Scottish figure. If the person who died was under 18, nothing is deducted, and mygov.scot says most councils in Scotland do not charge to bury or cremate a child aged 17 or under. Arrears of benefit are not deducted either. You can apply from the death until six months after the funeral, online, on a paper form or by phone on 0800 182 2222, Monday to Friday from 8am to 5pm. It can be paid to you or to the funeral director. Like the payment in England and Wales, it is only recovered from the estate, and Social Security Scotland says it will not ask you to pay it back. If you disagree with the decision, you have 31 days to ask for a re-determination. The guidance for the Scottish Welfare Fund lists funeral costs as something it does not pay for, pointing to this payment instead. For the other ways benefits differ north of the border, see Universal Credit in Scotland.

Northern Ireland runs the same Funeral Expenses Payment through the Department for Communities, with Universal Credit as a qualifying benefit and the same £1,000 for other funeral costs. Nidirect lists income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Universal Credit, plus Support for Mortgage Interest loan payments. The main difference is where the funeral can be: it must usually take place in the UK, and if it takes place in the Republic of Ireland, the person who died must normally have lived in Northern Ireland. The Bereavement Service number for Northern Ireland is 0800 085 2463, Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm, and its postal address is DfC Bereavement Benefit, Mail Handling Site A, Wolverhampton WV98 2JA. Nidirect says the date the claim form reaches a Department for Communities office is the date payment is considered from, not the date you downloaded or received the form, and that if you get Universal Credit you will not get a decision until after your next payment. You must usually ask for a mandatory reconsideration before you can appeal. On prepaid plans, nidirect says only that you will get help for items not covered by the plan. Tell Us Once cannot be used when the person who died lived in Northern Ireland. For the death of a child, Northern Ireland's Child Funeral Fund pays a one-off £3,441, to the funeral director, to you or split between you, and what you earn or have in savings does not affect it. Universal Credit in Northern Ireland covers the wider differences.

Several other schemes can sit alongside a Funeral Expenses Payment. For a child under 18, or a baby stillborn after the 24th week of pregnancy, the Children's Funeral Fund for England pays burial or cremation fees, including a doctor's certificate for a cremation, and gov.uk says up to £300 for a coffin, shroud or casket. It is not means-tested, the burial or cremation must take place in England, and the provider usually claims the fees directly, so you should not be charged. Claims must be made within 6 months of the funeral. Gov.uk says you might be able to apply for a Funeral Expenses Payment for other costs, and the regulations stop the same item being paid twice. In Wales, council and community council burial and cremation fees for children under 18 are waived, and families whose home is in Wales and who register the loss of a child under 18 get £500 towards the funeral and related costs, regardless of income or savings. The Welsh Government says Universal Credit treats the £500 as capital, which only matters if it takes your savings over the limit. If your husband, wife, civil partner, or a partner you lived with as if married, has died, check Bereavement Support Payment. You must have been under State Pension age and living in the UK or a country that pays bereavement benefits, and your partner must have paid enough National Insurance contributions or died because of an accident at work or a disease caused by work. It is not means-tested. The higher rate is £3,500 plus 18 monthly payments of £350, and the lower rate is £2,500 plus 18 monthly payments of £100. If you were married or in a civil partnership, the higher rate applies if you were getting Child Benefit for a child living with you, or were pregnant, when your partner died. If you lived together without marrying, one of those must have applied for you to qualify at all, unless you are applying for a backdated payment. Claim within 3 months of the death to get the one-off payment and all 18 monthly payments. Gov.uk says it will not affect your benefits for a year after your first payment, and it is not deducted from a Funeral Expenses Payment. A Budgeting Advance can also cover funeral expenses, but it is an advance you repay. Finally, where no suitable arrangements are being made, section 46 of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 places a duty on the council to bury or cremate anyone who has died in its area. The council can recover its costs from the estate, and must not cremate someone where it has reason to believe that would be against their wishes. That Act covers England and Wales.