BEREAVED relatives are to meet with council representatives to discuss a controversial grave topple testing policy.

The meeting with Blackburn with Darwen Council officials and councillors has been organised after the introduction of the testing for health and safety reasons.

Hundreds of memorials that have failed the testing have been strapped up and had stickers and poles attached to them.

If relatives cannot be traced, and the memorials are not repaired, unsafe graves are being flattened.

Eileen Eastham, of Darwen, whose husband Robert's grave at Pleasington Cemetery, Black-burn, has been deemed unsafe, is determined to fight the council for answers.

She said: "I will demand the council show me just exactly how that headstone is unsafe.

"I also want to know about the pressure they are putting on the stones, because I believe that the excessive pressures are damaging stones and making them unsafe when they were perfectly fine before."

The council has decided not to pay for repairs to headstones ,unlike Hyndburn Council and Burnley Council, leaving hundreds of families with costly bills. Coun Brian Gordon and the head of cemetery services for Blackburn with Darwen Council are expected to attend.

Coun Gordon said: "This is a very complicated subject but I have promised people to get in touch with whoever is responsible for the health and safety issues at the council.

"From what I've seen there are headstones that cannot reasonably be labelled a health risk but have been banded up.

"I'm not a weakling and I've pushed some of these stones quite hard and nothing moved.

What also puzzles me is that one headstone can be labelled yet another headstone feet away that is obviously unstable has not been.

"There appears to be a lot of inconsistency."

The meeting will be on Friday at 10am at the back of the crematorium.

Anyone who wishes to attend should travel to the top of the site, turn left and go as far as they can in that direction.