A long awaited report into cemetery provision for Kintyre has been met with scepticism by a Campbeltown councillor.
The paper, presented to Mid Argyll, Kintyre and the Islands (MAKI) Area Committee last week (Wednesday December 6) by Argyll and Bute Council Roads and Infrastructure Executive Director Kirsty Flanagan and policy lead for climate change and environment services Councillor Ross Moreland stated that Kilkerran Cemetery, Campbeltown, has eight years of availability left according to current calculations based on lairs being sold at their requirement.
A report to the council’s environment, development and infrastructure committee in December 2022 revealed that no lairs at the cemetery would be pre-sold by the authority to allow more time to develop plans for a new site.
In March this year it was reported to the committee that there were no cemeteries with less than five years’ capacity in the Mid Argyll, Kintyre and the Islands Area.
The council have since been able to identify space for an additional 180 lairs within the current site at Kilkerran by re-routing roads and removing shrubbery.
At last week’s meeting, however, it was also reported that, in the land immediately adjacent to Kilkerran cemetery, the sub-soil at lair depth was non-compliant within the terms of the groundwater requirements and a planning application would not be supported by SEPA.
South Kintyre representative Jennifer Kelly was at the meeting and said that as a new councillor she was “appalled” to learn of the current restriction of sales of burial lairs to the general public.
“This is surely down to poor management and a lack of forward planning on behalf of the council,” she told the Courier.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous and totally unacceptable that the general public are being denied the opportunity to choose their final resting place within their local cemetery.
“This is a very personal and emotive subject and requires to be addressed as soon as possible.
“Furthermore, the current situation is potentially doubling if not trebling costs for families as the 180 lairs in development within the current site at Kilkerran are not guaranteed to be full depth lairs.
“They are only being sold at point of need so it is likely that families will have to purchase more than one lair with no guarantee that they will be beside each other or even in the same cemetery grounds with the current moratorium on lair purchases.”
Councillor Kelly questioned the council officer Hugh O’Neill if it was an outright no from SEPA or if there was any recommendations as to what could be done to be able to utilise that ground.
“He said the conditions were very strict,” she told the Courier.
“Straight away that told me that further investigation work was required by the council as it was clearly not an outright no from SEPA.”
The report concluded that the cemetery portfolio has sufficient overall capacity for the next 30 years of operation but, locally, restrictions are in place to preserve remaining lair space.
The Cemetery Development programme is currently focused on providing additional cemetery space, based on the most urgent need, subject to the measure above.
However, the site selection and development programme is now a much longer process than may have been the case historically.