Funeral services broadcast online

A crematorium in Cambridgeshire has begun showing funerals held there as webcasts on the internet.

Mourners pay a one-off fee of £67.50 to access a live broadcast of the Cambridge Crematorium service.

They can also buy a DVD for £36.50 and an audio CD for £26. Cambridge City Council has been offering the service since the beginning of the year.

A spokeswoman for the company offering the webcast said it allowed mourners living abroad to be "involved".

The filming of services is done with a small, discreet camera at the back of the room and is streamed online with a 20-second delay.

'Dignity and respect'

Up to 3,000 cremations are carried out every year at the East and West chapels of the council-run establishment.

Alan Jeffrey, a director of Wesley Music, which provides the webcast service, said: "Over the last two or three years it has become more apparent that people living abroad, who cannot get home for a service, needed some measure of involvement.

"The feedback we are getting from families that use the service is incredibly positive.

"It is paramount in our minds, as a supply company, that there is a need for maintaining the proper element of dignity and respect to the point where if we ever felt the system was being abused in any way, we would simply withdraw it."