For the first time since a damning report on TV's World in Action, SCI's UK director Graham Barber talks to the Oxford Mail. Matt Childe, reports: FOR a trade so dependent on an image of dignity and decorum, the British funeral industry has found itself in an unsightly row.

Controversy surrounds Service Corporation International (SCI), the world's largest funeral firm and owner of Oxford Crematorium, and five county funeral directors.

In two damning reports by ITV's World In Action, the Texas-based multinational was accused of using American high-pressure sales tactics to increase the cost of the average funeral by 35 per cent.

In Oxfordshire, Peter and Margaret Green, of Kidlington, were revealed to have exhumed the ashes of their six-year-old son after a row over price rises at Oxford Crematorium.

The couple's case has prompted widespread concern over the price for maintaining memorials at the crematorium, which have more than doubled since SCI took over in 1994.

Now Wallingford rector the Rev John Morley has urged parishioners to boycott Oxford Crematorium. Witney Town Council says many families are snubbing the high prices in Oxford and bringing ashes back to their home town for burial after cremation. SCI, meanwhile, has remained defiant throughout. It has even joined MPs in calling for a code of practice to regulate the funeral industry and maintain competition.

MC: Can you describe SCI's role in the British funeral industry and, in particular, Oxford Crematorium?

GB: We entered the UK funeral market in 1994 with the acquisition of the two main funeral companies in the UK. We took over Oxford Crematorium from the Great Southern Group which had owned the crematorium since the early 1980s.

SCI now owns 16 out of 234 crematoria in the UK and a large number of undertakers. We are based in Texas and have interests worldwide but, personally, I am based in Norwich.

SCI has brought a level of investment to the UK funeral industry that has not been seen before.

We have completely updated Oxford Crematorium. In the last four years, we have spent £750,000. MC: We have received several complaints about the rising cost of a lease on a rose bush and memorial plaque at Oxford Crematorium. People have been quoted prices up to three times what they paid ten years ago and also urged to pay £3,000 for a 'memorial garden'. How do defend your prices?

GB: I am not going to be defensive over prices because I believe that the experienced service we provide is value for money. We serve 3,000 people a year at Oxford and have an excellent relationship with the public.

Yes, certain prices have gone up. But when we talk about £3,000 for a memorial garden that does not compare with the land families could have bought ten years ago. It is an impressive package.

We offer a ten-year lease with an updated plaque for £312 or £685 in perpetuity. I would suggest that it is extremely good value.

MC: But you must be making a massive profit?

GB: We are a commercial operation. There are an awful lot of roses that have to be replaced. We have a full-time gardening staff. There are trees to cut, chapels to redecorate and other maintenance costs.

MC: But surely something must be wrong if Peter and Margaret Green were driven to exhume their son's ashes 25 years after he died?

GB: I do not want to talk about the Greens' case because I do not want to reopen old wounds. All I can say is that we did not satisfy our clients and that is of great sadness to me. MC: Mr and Mrs Green described your sales techniques as "emotional blackmail". Aren't you introducing the 'hard sell' to an industry in which it is not approp- riate?

GB: There are three bases of contact between us and our clients.

Either we have just done a cremation and we write after two or three days to advise what funeral services are available, or the existing lease on a memorial is running out, or we are offering new services or new facilities that were not previously available.

If we did not provide people with details of what is available to our customers they would come back and say: 'I wish I had known that there was this.' MC: If SCI is so blameless, why do you think there has been this campaign against you?

GB: There has been a campaign of disinformation from certain parts of the funeral industry to discredit SCI for commercial reasons.

The biggest area of controversy has been pre-paid funerals in which SAIF (The Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors) represents the competition.

Not everything that has been said is factual. Not everything that has been said is fair and we want to tell the people of Oxford that we are here to serve them.

I am not here to condemn the rest of the funeral industry.

As a nation we are served very well by our funeral industry.

But it is a very competitive service. Price list:

Oxford Crematorium:

Lease on rose bush and memorial plaque, £312 for ten years. £485 for 20 years, £685 for 80 years.

Oxford City Council-owned cemeteries, Rose Hill, Botley, Wolverote and Headington:

one-off administration fee £45, mason's fee for headstone £300 upwards. Bereaved couple step up campaign PETER and Margaret Green are stepping up their campaign for regulation of the funeral industry after they exhumed their six-year-old son's ashes from Oxford Crematorium.

The couple, of Evans Court, Kidlington, reburied son Colin's ashes in St Mary's Church graveyard last November, 25 years after he died from a rare liver disease.

They paid £108 for a 100-year lease on a burial plot compared to a quote of £485 for a 20-year lease on a rose bush and plaque at Oxford Crematorium.

Mr Green is hoping a determined letter-writing campaign will persuade ministers to take notice.

He said: "We are refusing to give up. It is about time the Government took action against what is happening in the funeral industry instead of being more concerned with issues like fox hunting.

"We feel the Americans are ripping us off and the Government is letting them get away with it." Call for code to control burials THE Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF) wants a single code of practice regulated by a Government ombudsman.

Michael Windridge, spokesman for SAIF, hit back at Mr Barber's claims that its campaign against SCI was purely for commercial reasons.

He said: "SCI is quite right when it describes it as a trade war - a war of trading insults. This giant American corporation is adept at trading insults against our campaign."

The Rev Richard Thomas, spokesman for the Church of England in Oxford, said the growing gap between the cost of burial at crematoria and burial at church is putting pressure on churches. He said: "Churches simply could not charge these kinds of prices in a church yard. The moment you put a crematorium into the hands of a commercial company, there is pressure to make profits."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.