Safety tests planned for 8,000 Rossendale graves

2:59pm Thursday 4th October 2012 in News Photograph of the Author By Chris Adams

MORE than 8,000 graves across Rossendale are to be inspected within the next five years in one of the council’s biggest-ever safety initiatives.

Beginning this month, cemeteries in Haslingden, Rawtenstall, Bacup, and Whitworth, will be looked at.

The campaign takes its lead from the Health and Safety Executive, which has advised all local auth-orities to perform inspections in a bid to stop serious injuries and fatalities caused by unsafe memorials.

No such incidents have happened in the Valley, according to Alison Wilkins, the council’s locality manager.

If a headstone, or memorial, is deemed unsafe during testing, it will be listed on the cemetery notice board and the grave’s owner will be contacted, where possible, to help enable owners to carry out repairs.

Any memorials which pose an immediate danger to public safety will be carefully made safe, and the owner informed. Council leader Alyson Barnes, said: “Our cemeteries are very important within the community and we have to ensure all of ours are safe to visit.

“There have been some extremely tragic incidents involving unsafe headstones over the years, and we have a duty to make sure it never happens in Rossendale.

“We fully understand the sensitive nature of this campaign, but the council has to balance this with ensuring the risk to visitors, relatives, and our own cemetery staff, is minimised.

“This means a programme of inspection, working with the owners responsible for the graves, and advising them on the best steps to take for repair. Working together with the grave owners in a sensible and sensitive way, we can create a safe environment to remember loved ones.”

The inspection will begin in the cemeteries in Haslingden.

It will also highlight any untidy, and untended, graves.

The testing process consists of a visual inspection, and a nationally-recognised hand test.

Comments(3)

useyourhead says...
3:28pm Thu 4 Oct 12

OMG, why not organise a search of the entire county for venomous foreign snakes, just in case! or issue every man woman and child with a hard hat and enforce the wearing of said hat perchance a fragment of plane or meteorite should fall.
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If we had a healthy economy with surplus budget i would say go for it but we don't, far from it.

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kate11 says...
7:18am Fri 5 Oct 12

This is ridiculous!! I would like to see the figures about how many people have been killed by a falling gravestone. Most of them are only about 2ft height. I can understand for the more elaborate older ones but then what happens as there may be no relatives living. Also these large headstones have been standing for many years through torrential winds and storms and never moved!! Who will pay for these or will they be totally desecrated! My father is buried at Haslingden and there are designated pathways so most people only get near enough to their own family grave.. This happened in a local churchyard and some of these headstones moved slightly and so were then pushed over and laid flat and are still there more than 5 years later!! I have paid for that headstone and it is sheer vandalism by the council to push it over!!
Give us the figures of how many people have been killed and injured by a 2ft headstone and also about how much this is costing the council.. Another example of health and safety gone mad!!

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pdb951 says...
9:04pm Wed 10 Oct 12

More nonsense from the job creation group.

Sack them all. They have no useful purpose in this the real world

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