An increasing number of people either cannot afford or are not prepared to pay for the funeral of their relatives, forcing councils to foot the bill, the organisation for older people ANBO said on Monday.

Councils are obliged to pay for a funeral if there is no one available to cover the cost.

‘We are seeing more and more people leaving an inheritance of debts and the children refuse to pay for the funeral out of their own pocket,’ the ANBO told Nos television.

The situation is at its worst in the big cities. In The Hague, for instance, there were 137 council funerals in the first six months of this year, compared with 175 in the whole of 2012.