A website for death notices and memoriams has announced that it now carries five million notices – and counting.
Published by Reach, the owner of BusinessLive and dozens of regional news sites, Funeral Notices provides people with an online space to pay tribute to their loved ones by adding messages of condolence, virtual candles, photographs and videos.
Once published, notices remains online forever, providing friends and families with lifelong tributes. And now that number has topped five million.
The milestone is a bittersweet moment for Darren Minns, commercial director at Funeral Notices.
He said: "We deal with loss and bereavement every day and are incredibly sensitive to the needs of the people we support. Whilst we do not celebrate this milestone as such, we are extremely proud that we are trusted by millions of families to honour the legacy of their loved ones.
"We're the most popular tribute site in the UK and this comes with a tremendous amount of responsibility that we take very seriously. Funeral Notices will always be a safe place for the bereaved to pay tribute to their loved ones."
Tribute pages come with an option to include a charitable collection and some pages have raised thousands of pounds for charities.
Darren continued: "In 2022 we welcomed more than 12.6 million unique users to the website and this audience puts us in a great position to help families achieve some fantastic collections for charity, as well as receive important messages of support and condolence from friends and family around the world.
"I recently received some feedback from a lady who had sadly lost her granddaughter. She told me she found peace when adding tributes to her granddaughter's tribute page. She said 'It's like you have taken a weight off me and I get to say the things that I can't say out loud to her. I feel more peaceful and content afterwards.'
"Comments like this make our jobs worthwhile and it's why we will continue to invest in Funeral Notices to ensure it remains the number one platform in the UK for people to pay tribute to their loved ones."
Families can view tribute pages and create their own by visiting funeral-notices.co.uk.
