Heavenly Services collapse leaves terminally ill woman without funeral plan

Roy Smith said: "It makes me angry a company can do this"

A terminally ill woman has been left almost £1,700 out of pocket after a funeral directors went bust.

Linda Smith, of Hull, paid for a funeral plan with Heavenly Services Ltd after she received a cancer diagnosis.

She and husband Roy opted for a pre-paid plan to reduce the amount of stress the family was under.

However, the funeral company ceased trading and Mrs Smith has been told she is one of at least 370 customers who are unlikely to get their money back.

She said she was "absolutely shocked" when she received a letter from insolvency firm Auker Rhodes telling her Heavenly Services was to enter liquidation.

Mrs Smith took out her funeral plan with Heavenly Services in Hull

Mrs Smith has stage three oesophageal cancer and was told in June 2021 she has two to five years to live.

She said: "You hear the words terminal and think let's just get it all sorted and the quicker we do it the quicker we can forget about it and carry on living life."

She made an appointment at Heavenly Services in Hessle Road, Hull, the day after her diagnosis.

Her husband Roy said: "We wanted to alleviate as much pressure on ourselves so we could live as normal a life as possible."

Auker Rhodes said following the death of a former finance director in October, it became apparent "the company did not have sufficient working capital to continue to trade".

The Heavenly Services business operated funeral services from sites in Hull, Bradford, Leeds, Scunthorpe, Grimsby and Bridlington. All are now closed.

Under a funeral plan a person's funeral is pre-paid, generally for a fixed cost

Auker Rhodes said all company assets would be recovered and sold for the benefit of creditors.

"At this time it is not possible to say whether there will be any dividend to creditors and the investigations are likely to take a number of weeks to complete," it added.

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Mrs Smith said she now had no pre-planned funeral in place and the money they had lost could have been used to pay for a family holiday.

"I and many others have been conned by the company," she said.

"Nobody wants a pauper's funeral... please give us some dignity."

It has been previously stated in the Hull Daily Mail that police are investigating several reports of potential fraud relating to Heavenly Services.

Humberside Police told the BBC "our investigation into these reports continue".