On average, 80 pieces of addressed junk mail are sent to people who have died in the first twelve months following death. Nearly 47 million pieces of 'direct mail' are sent to the 584,000 Britons who die annually.

The figures come from The Bereavement Register, a service aiming to reduce advertising mail sent to the deceased. Although The Bereavement Register is a commercial product - it makes money by selling the names and addresses of people who have died to junk mailers - the service is hopeful it can reduce the amount of junk mail sent to the deceased.

According to Mark Roy, who set up The Bereavement Register after his father died five years ago, a quarter of the junk mail industry is not using the suppression file produced by his company. In an interview with thisismoney.co.uk, Mr Roy said: "In the past 12 months, 74% of direct-mailing companies have used the register, but not everyone is signing up.

"Some companies argue they have mailing targets to meet so they continue to mail everyone on their list, even though they know some may be dead."

In the article the charity Help the Aged argues that grieving families should be protected by making it a legal requirement for junk mailers to screen mailing lists against the register. At the moment no such requirement exists.