Bereavement Advice Centre

In partnership with ITC Legal Services, which says it is “the UK's largest probate provider”, the National Association of Funeral Directors established the Bereavement Advice Centre, which calls itself a not-for-profit advice organisation. The Bereavement Advice Centre was launched at the House of Commons in June 2007.

The Bereavement Advice Centre claims to have been welcomed by a variety of organisations from health, funeral, legal and advice sectors and their policy committee oversees development of the service and includes clergy, hospital bereavement support, legal, care home, medical, funeral undertaking and local government representations.

An article in the Law Society Gazette in June 2009 drew attention to the “financial links” between the Bereavement Advice Centre and ITC Legal Services. The article says the link has “come under fire from solicitors”. Patricia Wass, a partner at Plymouth firm Foot Anstey and chairwoman of the Law Society’s wills and equity committee, is quoted in the article as saying that she

is concerned that registrars ‘up and down the country’ are giving BAC’s leaflets to people when they report a death. This might imply that local authorities sanction BAC’s promotion of ITC’s commercial interests.

The Bereavement Advice Centre publishes a website with the subtitle ‘What to do when someone dies’. Solicitors say that the organisation’s leaflets publicising a helpline promoting BAC’s commercial owner ITC Legal Services are also widely available at local authority registrars.

Under the heading ‘how to deal with probate’, the site lists four options, the second of which is ‘Use a specialist company such as ITC legal services’. It says the company is ‘competitive with solicitors on cost and less expensive than some banks’.

While the Bereavement Advice Centre does provide a link to ITC Legal Services, it does not provide any link to consumer agencies such as Consumer Direct, which gives people limited advice on how they can conduct their own funeral arrangements at low cost and in their own preferred way, coupled with consumer information intended to afford better protection to the funeral consumer.

ITC Legal Services has also signed a deal and agreed a third party arrangement with Barclays Bank. Jonathan Rayner, writing in the Law Society Gazette, describes the deal as follows:

As part of the arrangement, ITC has access to all of a deceased person’s Barclays Bank account details, and may refer the bereaved friend or relative to its own, commercially independent probate services division to arrange a home visit.

Rayner quotes Jeremy Groeger-Wilson, head of the wills and estates team at Kent firm Clarkson Wright & Jakes solicitors, as questioning ITC’s claims of price competitiveness: “He said he was also concerned that vulnerable people may feel under pressure to sign up to the probate service.”

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