Legal
Privacy
The short version: no analytics, no cookies, no advertising, no third-party requests. Nobody is told that you were here or what you read.
Last reviewed: July 2026.
The short version
This site sets no cookies, runs no analytics, carries no advertising, and makes no requests to any other company’s servers. There is no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to.
Nothing you read here is recorded against you, shared, or used to build a profile. On a site people reach in the worst week of their lives, that seemed the obvious way to build it.
The only personal information we ever hold is what you type into the contact form, if you choose to use it.
Who we are
The Bereavement Guide, an independent, non-commercial publisher. We are the data controller for the small amount of information described below, and you can reach us at [email protected] .
We are not funeral directors, we sell nothing, and we do not act for anybody in respect of a death, an estate or a funeral. See about this guide .
What this website collects
Nothing, by default. No analytics package, no advertising or social media trackers, no embedded maps, no comment system, no fonts or scripts or stylesheets loaded from anybody else’s servers. That last point matters more than it sounds: a page that loads a font or a map from a third party tells that third party which page you opened. This one does not.
Server logs. The hosting provider keeps standard web server logs — IP address, time, page requested, browser — for security and troubleshooting, and deletes them on its own routine schedule. We do not analyse them, and they are not used to identify anybody.
Nothing about what you read is retained by us at all.
If you use the contact form
The form collects the name, email address and message you type, plus the subject you pick from the list.
- Why: solely to read and reply to your message. Most of what we receive is a correction to something on the site, which is what the form is mainly for.
- Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in responding to people who deliberately get in touch, and your consent, which is why the tick box is there.
- Who sees it: the editors, and the email provider that carries the message. It is not shared with anybody else, ever, and it is never used for marketing — there is no marketing.
- How long: messages are deleted within twelve months. Where a message has produced a factual correction to the site, we may keep a note of the correction itself, without your personal details.
Please do not send us confidential details about a death, an estate or a family dispute. We cannot advise on any of it, and it should not be sitting in our inbox. The free services that can help are on where to get help .
Telephone numbers on this site
The only telephone numbers published here belong to national charities and helplines. Ringing one takes you to that organisation, under its own privacy policy — we are not told that you rang, we have no relationship with any of them, and none of them pays to be listed.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask us for a copy of any information we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, ask us to restrict how we use it, or object to our using it. Write to [email protected] and we will reply within one month.
In practice, unless you have sent us a message we hold nothing about you at all, which makes most of these requests very quick to answer.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s independent data protection regulator.
Changes
If this policy changes, the review date at the top of this page changes with it.
You do not have to work this out in one sitting
Very little has to be done on the first day, and almost nothing has to be decided tonight. Start with the step-by-step guide, and if you need a person rather than a page, the helplines are free and answered by people who do this every day.