Coffins are now becoming too large to be properly cremated, funeral directors have claimed, as Britain suffers under an obesity epidemic.
Funeral service providers have been forced to significantly alter their operations, as caskets increasingly exceed the capacity limitations of crematorium facilities.
Industry professionals have issued warnings families are being denied their preference for cremation, instead being urged to select burial as the only option when deceased relatives prove too large for cremation equipment.
Funeral directors have been forced to procure wider caskets, recruit additional pallbearers, and in some cases utilise larger cremation furnaces.
Tim Purves, who heads the National Association of Funeral Directors (Scotland), confirmed instances have occurred where cremation has become impossible due to size constraints alone.
Mr Purves, who also operates William Purves, Scotland’s largest independent funeral directors, outlined the dramatic transformation the industry has undergone since he entered the profession.
“When I started 25 years ago, the standard width of a coffin was 18 inches,” he told The Telegraph.
“But now we use a 20-inch coffin as standard.”
Families are being denied access to cremations because deceased relatives are too large for coffins
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The shift represents a two-inch increase in what funeral services now consider typical dimensions for caskets across their operations.
However, even the larger coffins have proved insufficient in several cases.
“Occasionally we require a 24in coffin, but there are occasions when we need an even wider coffin than that,” Mr Purves explained.
He continued: “We always look after people in a dignified manner and would never cut corners because someone’s on the larger side.
“But we are noticing that as a general population people are getting bigger, which adds complications for our role.
“We have had occasions where the deceased is too large to be cremated, occasions where the family have not been able to have their loved one cremated.
“Due to the size, they’ve had to have a burial.”
Robert Swanson, Scotland’s Inspector of Burial, Cremation and Funeral Directors, identified very large and heavy coffins amongst the most significant difficulties confronting crematorium staff in his annual report published last month.
Mr Swanson’s report highlighted one particularly bad incident where an oversized coffin positioned on a catafalque — the mechanised platform used to display caskets during services — failed to lower.
When the moment arrived for the casket to descend from view, the coffin’s dimensions prevented the mechanism from functioning.
Approximately two-thirds of the population in Scotland is now overweight, and one-third is classified as obese.
Public Health Scotland warned in October the situation will deteriorate further in forthcoming years, with approximately 154,000 additional people projected to become obese between now and 2040.
Currently, around 1.5 million Scottish adults are living with obesity, a proportion that exceeds other UK nations and ranks amongst the highest when compared with other EU countries.
Dr Grant Wyper, principal epidemiologist at Public Health Scotland, provided detailed forecasts.
“We estimate 3.3 million cases of adult excess weight by 2040, with more pronounced increases for obesity,” he said.
“Between 2025 and 2040, we estimate an additional 118,000 female and 36,000 male cases of obesity.”