Since September 2021, funeral directors across the UK have been legally required to publish their prices in a standard format, on their websites and in their branches. Plenty of websites do it in a way that ticks the box and still leaves a grieving family squinting at a scanned page on a phone.
This is a practical guide to what the Competition and Markets Authority’s funerals order asks you to publish online, and how to present it so families can actually use it. It is guidance on the website side, not legal advice. The CMA’s own pages are the authority, and we link to them throughout.
What is the CMA funeral order?
The Funerals Market Investigation Order 2021 is a legal order made by the CMA after its investigation into the funerals market. The CMA found that prices for similar services differed between funeral directors, and that the way information was presented made it hard for families to compare. The Order was announced in June 2021 and, according to the CMA, its price rules took effect on 16 September 2021. Article 1 of the Order says it extends to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The full Order, an explanatory note and the price list templates are on the CMA’s Order page on gov.uk.
What does the Standardised Price List contain?
The Standardised Price List is a template set out in the Order. Article 3 requires you to use its exact terms and structure, not your own version of it. In outline, it covers:
- An attended funeral, where family and friends attend the burial or cremation, with a separate price for each of six listed items and a total. The items cover the legal and administrative arrangements, collecting the deceased, care before the funeral, a coffin, viewing by appointment, and taking the deceased to the cemetery or crematorium.
- An unattended funeral, where mourners do not attend the burial or cremation itself. The Order’s definitions note that a cremation with no service and no mourners present is sometimes referred to as a direct cremation.
- Fees you must pay, such as the typical local burial or cremation fee, which go to third parties.
- Additional products and services, such as extra mileage, extra transfers, collecting and delivering ashes, embalming, an officiant, and work outside normal office hours.
The template is downloadable from the CMA’s page, in English and in Welsh.
What else does the Order say must go on your website?
The Standardised Price List is the part everyone remembers, but it is not the whole list. Article 3 requires you to display three sets of price information in each branch and on your website:
- The Standardised Price List.
- An Additional Options Price List, covering everything you offer that is not on the standard list.
- The price information given to you by crematorium operators, in the format the Order sets.
Article 4 adds your terms of business: the size of any deposit, when the deposit and balance are due, the payment options you offer including any interest, and any late payment charges. Article 5 adds a disclosure of interests: who ultimately owns the business if that differs from the trading name, any material interest in a funeral price comparison website, and a register of material payments to third parties such as hospitals, hospices and care homes. The Order says that register must be updated every six months.
Where does the price list have to go on the website?
This is the part websites most often get wrong. Article 3(7) of the Order says that when you display the Standardised Price List on your website, it must be a PDF titled “Standardised Price List”, on a page no more than one click away from the homepage, with the link prominently labelled on the homepage so it is clear what it leads to.
The CMA’s explanatory note adds detail that matters for site structure:
- The terms of business and the disclosure of interests go in their own separate, appropriately titled PDFs, under the same one-click rule.
- If you have several branches, the website must show the relevant price list for each branch it covers.
- Price information must be accurate and up to date.
- The PDF does not stop you showing the same information in other formats as well. The note says the PDF is there so families can download and print it, and so the CMA can collect pricing data.
In branch, the Order requires the price information to be displayed clearly and prominently, with the Standardised Price List in the window where practicable. And if you have no website but market yourself on social media, the Order requires the price list to appear there instead.
How should you present funeral prices on a website?
Compliance is the floor. A family should be able to understand your prices on a phone, quickly, without downloading anything. A few choices make the difference:
- Put “Prices” in the main menu. Not in the footer, not under “About”. A plainly labelled link in the main menu puts your prices one click from the homepage, which is what the Order asks for, and answers the question families most want to ask.
- Set out the main prices as text on the page, as well as the PDF. Text reads well on a small screen and can be found by search engines. Keep the wording and figures identical to the Standardised Price List, so the two never disagree.
- Explain the terms in plain words. One sentence each on what an attended and an unattended funeral mean helps a family who has never arranged one.
- Use a PDF made from text, not a scan. A scanned image is hard to read when zoomed, and a screen reader cannot read it at all.
- Show the date the prices were last updated. It reassures families and reminds your staff.
- Make updating it a five-minute job. If replacing the PDF means emailing a web designer, it will be out of date by spring.
What are the common mistakes with funeral price lists online?
- The only link is in the footer, in small grey type among the legal pages.
- The PDF is renamed or reworded, or the list has been retyped in a new layout that drops items.
- One list covers every branch when the branches charge different prices.
- The additional options, crematorium prices or terms of business are missing, because only the standard list was uploaded.
- The prices are last year’s. The figures changed in branch but nobody replaced the file.
- Prices sit behind a form, so a family has to give an email address before they can see them.
The CMA publishes a compliance checklist for funeral directors. It takes a few minutes to run through against your own site, and it is the right place to start.
Does the CMA funeral order apply in Scotland?
Yes. Article 1 of the Order says it extends to Scotland as well as England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland also has its own rules. The Scottish Government’s Funeral Director Code of Practice, issued under the Burial and Cremation (Scotland) Act 2016, came into force on 1 March 2025. It notes that funeral directors are already required to comply with the CMA Order, and it requires a written complaints procedure to be available on the funeral director’s website, where there is one. If you operate in Scotland, check both.
Is this legal advice?
No. This is a guide to presenting the information well on a website. The Order, the explanatory note and the CMA’s guidance are the authority, and if you are unsure whether something applies to you, ask the CMA, your trade association or a solicitor.
Where Onlineify fits
Our free website audit will not tell you whether you comply with the Order, but it does check what a family and a search engine meet: speed on a phone, page titles, broken links, schema markup, and whether search engines and AI assistants can read the site. For the wider picture, read what a funeral director website needs.
Onlineify is a website product with published prices, never built from a template. A funeral director build includes a custom design, a first draft of the copy, Google Business Profile setup, schema markup, and Sanity, an editor where your staff replace the price list PDF and update the prices page themselves. One build fee, no Onlineify subscription, and every account in your name. See Onlineify for local businesses or what a website costs.