Fewer funerals while costs remain the same: amendment to statutes necessary
22.04.2025 – The City of Offenbach must keep its statutes up to date, both in terms of content and financially. The cemetery statutes and the cemetery and burial fee statutes have now been revised. The municipal council approved the changes at its meeting on Wednesday.
If the city councillors also approve this at their meeting on Thursday, May 22, 2025, the new cemetery statutes will come into force immediately and the new fee statutes will come into force after the end of the current calculation period on January 1, 2026.
The recalculation of the fee rates was necessary because fewer burials are now taking place after the coronavirus years with excess mortality throughout Germany. At the same time, however, personnel and material costs have risen due to higher wage settlements and general inflation. "Fees must always be charged to cover costs," explains city treasurer and responsible department head Martin Wilhelm. "If costs rise but income falls, the costs of the municipal cemeteries are no longer covered. As a municipality, we have no room for discretion and we have to increase the fees by statute."
Rising costs for funerals
From January 1, 2026, the cost of a burial will increase by between 10 and almost 13 percent. "A burial in a permanent grave with a 30-year right of use, for example, currently costs 3881 euros, but from 2026 it will be 4311 euros. That's an increase of 430 euros or 11.1 percent," says Christian Loose, Deputy Head of ESO Municipal Services of the City of Offenbach. "Anyone who chooses an urn burial in a permanent lawn grave with a 30-year right of use will pay 200 euros more instead of the previous 1975 euros. That is an increase of 10.1 percent." For the 25-minute use of the funeral hall, including set-up and cleaning, a fee of 250 euros will be charged instead of 239 euros, an increase of eleven euros or 4.6 percent.
As both the previous excess mortality rate and the current lower mortality rate affect the whole of Germany, all municipalities have to deal with the consequences. This is why Offenbach's new fees are on average roughly the same as the current fees in the neighboring cities of Frankfurt and Hanau, even if there are upward or downward deviations for individual types of burial or services.
Extended occupational health and safety for the cemetery team established
In the amended statutes themselves, the extended occupational health and safety regulations for the cemetery team from Stadtwerke Offenbach's Stadtservice were laid down for further burials. In future, it will no longer be permitted to dig an aisle to the side of the existing grave, as this poses a risk to employees. Instead, the additional coffin must be lowered into the crypt from above, which is more time-consuming and therefore more expensive. In the course of the rewriting, the statutes were also formulated in a gender-equitable manner throughout. It was also stipulated that people who live or were born in Offenbach have priority for burial in the municipal cemeteries.