Double award win for Yorkshire funeral firm

Yorkshire funeral firm Full Circle Funerals has scooped two awards at the National Good Funeral Awards, including the coveted title of Funeral Director of the Year.

It also won Green Funeral Director of the Year in recognition of its efforts to support those choosing sustainable funeral options as well as its own progress as a business towards B Corp status, a rigorous measure of sustainability and good practice.

Currently celebrating its fifth birthday, Full Circle has four sites across Yorkshire – Bramley, Guiseley, Halifax and Harrogate - and a team of 10. The latest accolades follow success in the international Modern Work Awards earlier in the year.

Founder and Yorkshire Businesswoman member, Sarah Jones, who switched from her career as an NHS surgeon to become a funeral director, said she had set out to launch a new kind of service that would change people’s experiences of arranging a funeral.

Sarah said: “We are incredibly proud that our ambition to do things differently has been acknowledged nationally and that we have been recognised for our contribution to the communities where we are based, offering support not just to people who need to arrange a funeral but for all those involved in caring for bereaved people and those approaching the end of their lives.

“The ongoing availability of support after the funeral is also something that people tell us really helps them.

“In addition to our day to day work as funeral directors, we have successfully established a programme of knowledge-sharing webinars where individuals and professionals can share experience and best practice and our bereavement group is open to the whole community, not just those we have supported.”

Sarah said Full Circle Funerals was established to enable people to have the confidence to make positive choices about funerals and the way they remember someone who has died.

She said: “Funeral and bereavement research, including projects that we are involved with ourselves, are starting to show that a good funeral can have a positive impact on long term grief and this is important to us because wellbeing is integral to our service, from the interiors of our funeral homes to the way we look after people who are arranging a funeral and our own team.

“This approach has been really well received in the communities we operate in and we are delighted it has now been recognised with these two significant national award wins.”