Kingsclere Parish Council to target non-compliant graves at village cemetery

A Kingsclere parish councillor has warned the council was in a “no-win” situation as it agreed to clamp down on graves which are non-compliant with the village cemetery rules.

The council’s rules and regulations for the Ecchinswell Road Cemetery state graves are not allowed any fencing or kerbs, while vases and jars must be either part of the memorial or placed on the memorial’s base.

Plastic flowers, toys, wind chimes and other “paraphernalia” are also banned in order to make it easy to maintain the cemetery.

However, a growing number of graves at the cemetery are flouting these rules, and councillor Clive Mussett said “sections of the cemetery are becoming unmanageable”.

The council currently pays £6,000 a year for the cemetery to be maintained.

Debate centred on whether the rules should be enforced, and how far the council was prepared to go to ensure they were abided by.

Mr Mussett said: “There’s a reason those rules and regulations are there, but we have taken a fairly liberal approach.

“We’re now in a situation where we’ve given an inch and a mile has been taken.

“There has to be a limit. Whether that’s to the letter of the rules, which is a line we haven’t taken, or on a case-by-case basis.

“It’s going to become a major problem for us.”

Councillor Nicola Peach said there wasn’t a problem with items on the gravestones themselves, but suggested items on the graves should be removed as the grass couldn’t be mown.

She said: “The main issue for graves seem to be kerbs and fences, which the rules don’t allow for the simple reason that they then can’t be mown.

“My view would be those graves should be written to and asked for those to be removed, because you are going to end up in a situation where they are completely unmaintainable.”

She continued: “Removing the pots, mowing the graves, putting the pots back – if the contractors have to do that for however many graves, it’ll take hours and cost thousands to maintain the cemetery, which isn’t fair on the taxpayer.”

Council chairman John Sawyer said if it was going to draw a line, it would have to draw a line across the board, without showing favouritism.

Councillor Ray Peach said “virtually nobody” in the cemetery was complying with the rules, that they weren’t working and couldn’t be enforced without “uproar”.

He suggested if residents put a border around a plot, it had to be strimmable.

Mr Mussett warned that the council was in a no-win situation, and that there would be uproar whether it enforced the current regulations or ruled that sections of the cemetery were unmaintainable.

The council agreed to gradually return the cemetery to how the regulations describe, put out a general notice urging residents to comply with the regulations, and begin contacting people row by row.