The applicant or the engaged licensed undertaker should make an appointment of the date of burial with the relevant office of the cemetery where the deceased is to be buried. On the day of burial, the applicant should bring along the following documents to the cemetery office concerned to go through the formalities:

• a completed "Application for Burial at Public Cemetery" [FEHB 144] (the particulars of the hired licensed undertaker must be provided in the form, which must also be stamped with the undertaker's chop recognised by the FEHD); and
• the original of the "Certificate of Registration of Death" [Form 10]; or
• the original of the "Certificate of Order Authorizing Burial of Body" [Form 11].

(For application for coffin burial at a cemetery in the Islands District, the applicant is required to submit also the relevant documentary proof, such as a letter issued by the relevant rural committee.)

After the burial, the FEHD will collect the fee required through the licensed undertaker hired by the applicant. The fee is HK$3,190 for adult burial and HK$2,605 for child burial.

An applicant may apply for burial services in person or engage a licensed undertaker to make application on his / her behalf.

Family members of the deceased or their authorised undertaker may engage a mason registered with the FEHD for installation of a headstone on the deceased's grave in a public cemetery. Charges usually vary according to the quality of the stone and the inscription required. The family members may make arrangements with the mason direct, and the mason will make the relevant appointment and registration for the works.

Coffin burial spaces are not intended for permanent use and exhumation is required after a specified period. The FEHD annually issues an order in the Government Gazette requiring the removal or exhumation from graves of all skeletal remains which have been interred in the coffin burial spaces of public cemeteries for more than six years.

After burial for six years, the applicant should complete an "Application for Permit to Remove/Exhume Remains" [FEHB 148] and bring along the documentary proof of his/her relationship with the deceased (if no such proof is available, the applicant is required to take an oath at the Cemeteries and Crematoria Office) to a Cemeteries and Crematoria Office of the FEHD at Hung Hom or Happy Valley to apply for a "Permit to Remove/Exhume Remains" [FEH(L)86A].

Family members of the deceased may cremate the exhumed remains, or re-bury them at an urn grave of a public or private cemetery.

An application for re-burial of exhumed remains at a public cemetery should be made at the FEHD's Cemeteries and Crematoria Office at Hung Hom. The applicant should complete an "Application for Permit to Remove / Exhume Remains" [FEHB 148] and an "Application for Urn Grave Burial or Placing Additional Skeletal Remains / Ashes" [FEHB 262], and pay the fees of HK$6,305 for an urn grave and HK$120 for the Exhumation Permit. Upon payment, the applicant will be issued with an "Authorisation to Bury Skeletal Remains". He / she should arrange for a registered mason to bury the exhumed remains in the urn grave.

As the urn graves in the public cemeteries managed by the FEHD are for the interment of skeletal remains, the first deceased person should be interred in the form of skeletal remains. For the convenience of family members to pay tribute and to make optimal use of land, for each urn grave in which the skeletal remains of a deceased person have been interred (except those at the closed Diamond Hill Urn Cemetery), the permit holder of the grave may apply for placing two additional sets of cremated ashes or skeletal remains (the deceased whose cremated ashes or skeletal remains are to be added must be a close relative of or be in close relationship with the first deceased person), i.e. each urn grave can accommodate the skeletal remains or cremated ashes of no more than three deceased persons.

Each urn grave in public cemeteries can accommodate the skeletal remains or cremated ashes of a maximum of three deceased persons, provided that the first deceased person is interred in the form of skeletal remains, and that the deceased whose ashes or remains are to be added must be a close relative of or be in close relationship with the first deceased person.