CEMETERY EXTENSION AS BURIAL PLOTS RUNNING OUT

This article appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Cemetery extension as burial plots running out

A cemetery will be extended to help prevent a burial crisis in the city.Some 1,000 new plots will be created at Saffron Hill Cemetery by Leicester City Council as part of a £450,000 extension.

The city is rapidly running out of burial space and the move will create enough space at the cemetery for the next 10 years.

Adrian Russell, the council's director of environmental services, backed the extension.

He said: "As everyone knows, our cemeteries are quickly filling up and we're running out of burial space in the city.

"This extension, on land already owned by the council, will allow the cemetery to continue operating for another decade.

"It's a relatively short-term solution, but, later in the year, we'll be examining the options open to us to deal with the issue in the much longer term."

Councillors have previously floated the idea of creating a new graveyard outside the city boundary, because of the lack of suitable land within the city boundaries.

Tony Donovan, executive director of Age UK in Leicestershire, said: "The extension is good news because so many people who were born and raised in Leicester want to be buried here in the city and not outside in the county somewhere.

"Having burial sites within the city makes it easier for local people to visit the graves of loved ones.

"If new sites were created out in the county, it would mean longer journeys by public transport for many visitors, who are often older people."

Saffron Hill cemetery is Leicester's second-largest burial site and serves the south of the city.

It has a general burial area for traditional lawn graves, a small Polish burial area, a children's section and a Muslim cemetery with prayer house.

The cost of the extension includes landscaping, roads, drainage and paving.

Kenny Hill, 62, from New Parks, said: "When you've grown-up in a city you want to be buried there when you die, but if the space runs out then I'd have to get buried somewhere else and I don't think I'd like that idea.

"I think it's good news the cemetery is being extended."

Margaret Sinton, 70, from Spinney Hills, said: "It's great that they're extending the cemetery but there are more old people around than ever before so what is a problem now will eventually become a crisis."

The city's main burial site – Gilroes Cemetery – was recently extended across eight acres of farmland.

The other two sites in the city are Belgrave Cemetery and Welford Road cemetery.

The work at Saffron Hill will be completed within two years.

FOCUS GROUP ON BEREAVEMENT SERVICES

Saffron Hill Cemetery

At the Cathedral Centre, St Martins, this evening, for a different sort of meeting of Leicester Council of Faiths - well, certainly different from any I've attended during my time working for them. A focus group session involving members of the full Council of Faiths and invited guests (mainly representatives of the Muslim Burial Council for Leicestershire). We meet at the Cathedral Centre, for a presentation and discussion on Leicester City Council's Bereavement Services. Bereavement Services is undergoing its first formal review since 2003.

The presentation is led by Richard Welburn, Head of Parks and Green Spaces, Leicester City Council (with four City Councillors in attendance). Bereavement Services is part of the City Council's Parks and Green Spaces Service. It provides for burial, cremation, grounds maintenance of cemeteries and administration. It employs 25 staff and runs four cemeteries and one crematorium.

We're introduced to the historical background, facts and figures and legislative requirements currently affecting provision of bereavement services and the operational procedures determining how these services are delivered. There are four cemeteries in Leicester today:

• Welford Road (est 1849) which is included in the Register of Historic Landscape and is closed for new burials;
• Belgrave (est 1881) which is closed for new burials;
• Gilroes (est 1902) which is the location of Leicester's crematorium;
• Saffron Hill (est 1931) which is included in the Register of Historic Landscape, the Chapel Lodge and Gates of which are grade II listed.

We're told about current challenges faced by this service in the city:

• mercury abatement (there's a statutory requirement to reduce the amount of mercury vapour emitted into the atmosphere from fillings in the teeth of those being cremated);
• acquisition or extension of burial land (Gilroes has 3-4 years estimated capacity at current levels, Saffron Hill 5-6 years, less if proposed land extension to Gilroes doesn't proceed);
• memorial safety (a sensitive subject since memorials remain the property of the family of the decease and their upkeep is not the City Council's responsibility);
• systems (much information related to this service is recorded manually, it's costly to transpose large amounts of such records onto computer, large amounts of staff taken up with answering questions about historic burials that can require lengthy, complex and manual searches);
• multi faith provision.

While many of us would probably be interested in some or all of these issues, it's this last one that concerns the Council of Faiths most - obviously. In terms of serving the diverse faith communities of Leicester, the Jewish Torah was opened at Gilroes in 1902; a Muslim Janazgah was at Saffron Hill in 1985, and Hindu, Sikh and Jain facilities were introduced at Gilroes in 1989. The biggest challenge facing the Parks and Green Spaces Service in this topic area now is the provision of additional mourner accommodation at Gilroes.

Parks and Green Spaces identifies the main risk for this review as being "that individual religious groups think independently and pursue self interest." And their solution? "By using the Council of Faiths as an intermediary, rather than meeting with individual focus groups, we hope to mitigate the likelihood of this occurring."