Checks on 35,000 graves begin

Safety inspections of 35,000 gravestones across Dudley borough are set to begin and will see any posing a hazard laid flat until they are repaired.

Dudley Council workers will start a three-year cycle of visiting the borough’s 23 cemeteries, including seven which still have space for new graves, from October.

As responsibility for memorials rests with the deceased’s family owners will be contacted over unstable ones.

They face paying up to £80 for a new ground anchorso the memorial stays upright.

Elsewhere families have reacted angrily to finding headstones pushed over.

Cabinet member for culture and leisure Councillor Charles Fraser Macnamara said: “We realise that this is a particularly sensitive issue and would like to assure families that the inspections will be carried out in a sensitive and appropriate manner.

“We must stress that memorials would only be laid down where there was an immediate danger to cemetery visitors.

“As the council has a duty of care to all cemetery visitors any memorial found to be in an unsafe condition, posing an immediate danger, may have to be laid flat while the owner is contacted.”

Council bereavement services manager Stuart Connelly said if graves passed the test they would not need to be inspected for another five years. “If a memorial is dangerous we would have to lay it flat, but we need to put it in perspective - we are clearly not out to lay down hundreds of stones. We cannot afford for an accident to take place, I am sure people will appreciate that.”

For information call 01384 813970.

By John Brenan