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Responsibility for the interment or cremation of the great majority
of persons who die in hospitals is, therefore, not falling upon a local
authority, as is evidenced by the foregoing figures.. This Council deals
with such cases as may be referred to them by hospital authorities owing to
the failure of liable relatives to assume their responsibilities, whilst
the necessary arrangements are always made in respect of persons dying in
their own homes when it is obvious that exhaustive enquiries for next of
kin have proved unavailing.
Under the Second Schedule of Part II of the National Insurance Act,
1946, appear details of Death Grants payable, subject of course, to the
fulfilment of certain provisions and the fact that either the deceased
person or a legally liable relative has made a qualifying number of
contributions to National Insurance.
A grant is obtainable when the deceased person was at the time of
death
Grant
(a) under the age of three years £ 4
(b) between three and six years £ 6
(c) between six and eighteen years £10
(d) over the age of eighteen years £20
A grant cannot be secured in the case of a man born before 5th July
1883, or a woman born before 5th July, 1888. A further exception is made
in the case of a child under the age of ten years who was born before
5th July, 1948.
Section 50 of the National Assistance Act, 1948, provides that "an
authority may recover from the estate of the deceased person or from any
other person who for the purposes of this Act was liable to maintain the
deceased person immediately before his (or her) death, expenses incurred".
In the great majority of cases it has been found that the estates of
deceased persons whose burials have been carried out by the Council have
proved of little value. On the other hand, on the few occasions when
the effects of a deceased person have realised more than the funeral
expenses, the balance of the estate is transferred to Her Majesty's
Treasury. A local authority is committed to the following procedure,
for which it does not receive any reimbursement:- (i) the removal of the
deceased from his or her home address to a mortuary or undertaker's
chapel; (ii) the prosecution of enquiries to establish the existences
or otherwise, of next-of-kin (which at times involves recourse to the
despatch of telegrams or the making of long-distance telephone calls;)
(iii) the listing of effects, and their subsequent transfer to store
pending developments, and (iv) the preparation of considerable
correspondence before a particular case can be finally settled.