Law Commission consultation on burial and cremation

Overview

This is a public consultation by the Law Commission for England and Wales.

We are consulting on provisional proposals for reform to burial and cremation law. That includes provisional proposals relating to grave reuse and reclamation, regulation of burial grounds, and aspects of cremation law relating to ash remains, among other issues.

For more information about this project, click here.

We recommend that consultees read the consultation paper before responding to the consultation. A shorter summary is also available. Both documents are available on the Burial and Cremation project page, at https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/project/burial-and-cremation/ . Consultees do not need to answer all the questions if they are only interested in some aspects of the consultation.

As part of our commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion, our policy is to use gender-neutral language in our work and correspondence. Using gender-neutral language promotes gender equality and challenges prejudicial assumptions and gender stereotypes.

The Law Commission encourages correspondents to retire the greeting “Dear Sir(s)” and instead address correspondence to the relevant Commissioner or specific project teams. Alternatively, correspondents may wish to use a more generic inclusive greeting such as “To whom it may concern”, “Dear colleague(s)”, “Dear Commissioner” or “Dear Law Commission.

As a consultative body, we will continue to treat all correspondence equally regardless of how it is addressed.

About the Law Commission: The Law Commission is a statutory body, created by the Law Commissions Act 1965 (“the 1965 Act”) for the purpose of promoting the reform of the law. It is an advisory Non Departmental Public Body sponsored by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). The Law Commission is independent of Government. For more information about the Law Commission please click here.

Responses to this consultation: We may publish or disclose information you provide us in response to this consultation, including personal information. For more information on how we consult and how we may use responses to the consultation, please see page III of the consultation paper. For information about how we handle your personal data, please see our privacy notice.

Once you have completed your consultation response, we would be grateful if you could complete a short, anonymous survey to help us understand the characteristics of individuals and organisations who have responded. Your answers will be held and analysed separately to your consultation response. The link is here.