As part of that initiative, the Group established the Funeralcare Forum a public panel chaired by Claire Rayner OBE, which has examined ways in which the funeral experience can be improved.

The forum has provided some valuable insights, not least of which is the need for more information to help people make every funeral special. These findings were published in the Co-operative Group Funeral Rights Report.

• How many people in this country know what to do when a relative or friend dies?
• How many know how to organise a funeral and how much it is likely to cost?
• How many know what questions to ask?

The answer to these questions is: very few.

Which means that the service we will all need to use sooner or later is one we are likely to have to deal with in a state of extremely high emotion and almost total ignorance.

We should not be afraid to set out our funeral wishes so that those close to us know exactly what we want - nor, as consumers, should we be frightened of demanding from funeral providers the right to have those wishes fulfilled.

Yet in a world where so many other service sectors have had to adapt to meet modern needs, it is clear that funerals have some way to go in meeting society’s expectations.

In a sense, we only have ourselves to blame. More than ever, we need to speak out about what kind of funerals we really want - yet many of us are still constrained by our reluctance to confront the issue, our lack of knowledge about what’s possible and our wish to get the funeral ‘over and done with’.

No wonder there’s a high degree of ‘secret disappointment’ surrounding many funerals and the feeling, months or years later, that we could and should have done more to commemorate and celebrate the lives of those we love.

Surface satisfaction and ’Secret’ disappointment --The Group, knew from research among people who had organised a funeral that the overwhelming majority were satisfied with the arrangements – or at least said they were.

A cause for concern is the unnaturally high level of apparent satisfaction in the Funeral Care studies among people who had organised a funeral in the past five years: only three per cent expressed dissatisfaction.

People say they are satisfied, but there is evidence people set their sights too low when planning a funeral, because they don’t know the options and choices available and because of the fear and taboo that surrounds death and funerals.

So are they really satisfied?

Of those who said they were ‘very’ or ‘quite’ satisfied with the last funeral they had arranged, more important was that findings that half said it could have been improved.

This is cause for concern: despite claiming to be satisfied, as then half were ‘secretly’ disappointed by the funeral they had arranged for the person they had lost.