More than 250 people in South Yorkshire have had ‘paupers’ funerals’ in less than three years – dying too poor to pay for their own.

Since April 2012, 258 people have had ‘public health funerals’, in which councils pay because there is either no-one willing or able to do so

Freedom of Information requests have revealed more than £235,000 has been spent on the funerals by Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster and Barnsley councils in that time.

Reported by the Retford Guardian. You can read the full story here. 

I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.