Burial fee rise branded immoral and insensitive

Tuesday 30th December 2008, 2:30PM GMT.

Trevor Kirk, who used to run Friends of the Foulon, said the rise in burial fees was immoral. Mr Kirk is pictured next to his son’s Grave. (Picture by Adrian Miller, 0695442)

INCREASED burial charges at the Foulon Cemetery have been branded immoral and insensitive.

Criticism of the decision by Treasury and Resources came from many sources but was particularly strong from the former head of Friends of the Foulon.

Trevor Kirk led the group that consulted with the States on issues at the cemetery, inactive for some four years, saying the new prices were immoral.

Western parishes rector the Rev. Maurice Strike described the increases as outrageous and insensitive. They were also attacked by the island’s Vice Dean.

The cost of a plot and burial will rise from £482 to £1,400 from Thursday. The figure will be £3,700 from 1 January 2011.

‘I think the £173,000 loss on the running costs is small fry in terms of the States budget,’ said Mr Kirk.

‘I think they should have been looking at the possibilities of compulsory purchase of more land.’

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John

January 11, 2009 at 6:29 pm

Seventy percent of the UK population opt for cremation. For a relatively modest fee you can line up with the great and the good and take your 45 minute slot for an impersonal committal and defiantly stamp your last carbon footprint impression as you head up through the various filters and flumes to a better place. With the large numbers opting to take this route the financial returns for both the public and private operated crematoriums are very good indeed.

I’m sure the majority of the public don’t opt for cremation because they don’t want to be a financial burden on their fellow rate payers. But like it or not cremation may not be carbon neutral but it certainly doesn’t leave quite the financial stain on the authorities’ coffers as burial.

Cemeteries are a hack’s delight strap lines are easy “Council make grave mistake” “Council dig them selves in a hole”, or for more drama “Council can’t afford to bury the dead!” Invariably the substance to the story is as shallow as the grave but it makes for good copy.

Cemeteries are rarely a vote winner but can easily become a vote loser for the council leaders and here lies the problem.

To build a new cemetery for 4000 graves will cost the average council after land purchase and construction between £300,000 and £400,000, on top of which you have the annual running costs for the management and maintenance team and this may be up to £200,000 per year. Few local authorities with populations of less than one hundred thousand will sell more than 150 new graves a year, yes more people will require burial but many burials are relatives being interred in the same grave.

Estimations on the cost of maintaining a grave for a typical 75 year exclusive rights period range from £1500 to £3000 (this doesn’t include interest on capital for the development costs). Simply put the cheapest that any grave should be sold for is £2000 and yet the average grave plot price in the UK is probably less that £600.

It would be a brave councillor indeed who would double the price of a plot before an election but I would argue that to subsidise a lifestyle (deathstyle) choice to the tune of 100% on let’s not forget a non-mandatory service provision, amounts to negligent spending of public monies.

If the charging of burials was based on cost plus profit as with cremation, then the maintenance and quality of UK cemeteries could be improved and demand increased.

Whilst I am sympathetic with Mr Kirk burial is a choice and councils have a duty to all members of the public and a duty to act responsibly with public money. I am less sensitive to Rev Strike as he knows full well that when C of E church yards close in the UK the council are duty bound to maintain them at the expense of all denominations and non-conformists taxes; yet we live in a multicultural society, some discrimination there surely especially since the Church of England is not lacking in the odd penny?

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