Funeral directors helping those affected by firm entering administration
A Black Country funeral director has pledged to help families hit by the loss of their funeral plans after another provider went into administration.
Jennifer Ashe & Son from Willenhall have been offering Golden Leaves Funeral Plans for a number of years and have agreed to take on plans made with Safe Hands.
Safe Hands was one of the biggest funeral plan providers in the country, but was found to have lost money from its trust fund when it was applying to be legislated by the financial conduct authority and went into administration after withdrawing its application.
It left 46,000 families across the country who had purchased Safe Hands plans with a funeral plan that they had paid for, so Jennifer Ashe will be helping families who bought Safe Hands plans with them as the funeral director by honouring the plans.
It means that 150 plans are now covered by Jennifer Ashe, with managing director John Ashe saying the firm was in a position to help.
He said: "We're quite fortunate that we have the resources to able to do that and we said to the families that we'll cover the cost of the funeral as we don't think it's fair that they should lose out on what they paid for.
"For us, it's the right thing to do and we are known as a good, reputable family funeral directors, so the least we can do is support families in this time."
Mr Ashe also said that the firm would offer its services for free for people who took out Safe Hands Plans with a different funeral director, with those people only having to pay the third party fees.
He said it was good to be able to help people in their time of need, talking about helping an 84-year-old woman who had lost out on a plan by offering her their services for free.
He said that if people wanted to get in touch about the services and plans the firm provided, they could do so by going to the Jennifer Ashe & Son website.
He said: "If they have a Safe Hands funeral plan with another funeral provider, they can come to any one of our branches.
"Each branch has its own specialist team which deals with funeral plans, so they can assist with what people want and telling them what we will and won't cover for free."
To find out more, go to jafunerals.co.uk.
