A COMMUNITY stalwart is calling on family members to help halt the plans to build on the final resting place of former patients at Calderstones Hospital.

Mel Diack, 62, from Mitton Road in Whalley, has started a campaign called 'Friends of the former Calderstones Cemetery' to stop The Shrine Lancashire from building a crematorium where the remains of 995 former patients were put.

Burials took place until the early 1990s from the hospital with ashes being buried there up to 2002.

The plans passed by the Ribble Valley Borough Council showed the crematorium could hold four services a day and hold a funeral chapel.

The group, which started last week, has several members from the area and Mr Diack has also had support from families in Australia and the United States who have relatives in the cemetery.

The founder of the Clitheroe Youth Forum said that the bodies within the burial ground were his main issue.

He said: "Going back only a few generations there was people put in the hospital for minor reasons.

"The families didn't want to know about them and forgot about them and as the way it was at the time, society didn't want to know either.

"But now things have changed, there are families living in Whalley and other areas who will have known people in those graves.

"Residents and I do not want these graves being broken up or built on.

"I'm calling on families and residents to join together and help fight what is happening here."

When building on a burial ground, the Ministry of Justice has to grant authority under the Disused Burial Grounds Act 1981.

In a letter to a concerned resident, a spokesman from the ministry said that it had not received any requests for permission to develop the site.

The chief executive of the council, Marshal Scott, said the council cannot refuse a planning application because the applicant doesn't have the authority to build yet.

In a letter he said: "Whether or not the developer has authority under the Disused Burial Grounds Amendment Act 1981 is not a material consideration and therefore not a reason to refuse planning consent."