MPs Rob Butler and Greg Smith visit Heritage & Sons to discuss tackling loneliness and helping families throughout the pandemic

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MPs Greg Smith (left) and Rob Butler (centre) with Ben Blunt from Heritage and Sons

Heritage & Sons’ Wendover funeral home, part of CPJ Field & Co. on Friday welcomed Rob Butler, MP for Aylesbury and Greg Smith, MP for Buckingham to discuss how the funeral home has adapted in light of COVID-19 restrictions to continue to provide the same level of care for grieving families during this tough time.

Heritage & Sons, part of CPJ Field & Co., offer funeral homes in Amersham, Aylesbury, Bletchley, Buckingham, Wendover and Winslow. Since the company’s beginnings in 1885, a lot has changed, but the unique challenges experienced during the pandemic have meant business has been forced to continually adapt to changing government guidelines.

The wider CPJ Field business has innovated and developed ways to work safely whist still delivering the quality and care it is known for. Some of these innovations include:

  • Offering families the opportunity to arrange funerals using remote technology such as Zoom, to manage social distancing and involve all those who may otherwise have been unable to do so in the traditional face to face way
  • Enabling friends and neighbours to pay their respects by carefully planning cortege routes that the Hearse travels to allow those unable to attend in person to line the route and say a final farewell
  • Provision of webcast facilities to enable those unable to attend to watch services online, both at crematoriums and in churches and cemeteries by using outside broadcast facilities

Hosting the MPs was Ben Blunt, Senior Funeral Director for Heritage and Sons part of CPJ Field and Co., who comments that “we were very pleased to welcome both Rob Butler MP and Greg Smith MP to our Wendover funeral home, to share how we support bereaved families across Buckinghamshire as one of the country’s oldest independent family funeral directors.  It was also a good opportunity to share some of the more recent challenges experienced in funeral service during the pandemic, and how we have responded to continue to provide the very best possible care to families experiencing loss of loved ones at this time“.

Rob Butler and Greg Smith both published tweets following the visit:

@RobBAylesbury: Grateful to Ben Blunt @CPJField Wendover for talking to @gregsmith_uk & me today about supporting Bucks nursing homes to combat social isolation; helping families at the toughest time during #COVID19; & ways to ensure all funeral directors observe the highest standards & ethics

 @gregsmith_uk: Really inspiring to hear – alongside @RobBAylesbury – from Ben Blunt of @CPJField Heritage & Sons, about his experiences as part of the Local Resiliance Forum during Covid-19 and the firms work across our county in tackling loneliness in Bucks care homes.