Space problem at cemetery sends burial costs soaring

Burials at Northallerton and Romanby cemetery are going up from £240 to £600 for a full interment as part of plans to expand the graveyard.

Charges for other services, including interment of ashes, will be decided at a meeting on October 4 and are also expected to rise.

John Pelter, chairman of the Northallerton and Romanby joint burial committee, said the increase was needed to expand the graveyard into the neighbouring Cemetery Fields.

He said: "If we didn't do this, then within a year or year-and-a-half the people of Northallerton and Romanby who wish to be buried there would have no burial plots and would have to go elsewhere.

"We have a duty to provide burial places and there is no other solution. If the people of Northallerton and Romanby need to be buried in the town we have to provide it."

Money to pay for the expansion, estimated at £125,000, will be borrowed from the Public Works Loan Board, a Government agency which loans money to statutory bodies for major projects.

The cash, which will be paid back over a 25-year period, will pay for footpaths, a retaining wall between the two cemeteries and grading the levels between the two.

Work will also be undertaken to discover the level of the water table in Cemetery Field and to drain the land.

Mr Pelter said if the money was not raised through increasing the cost of burials it would fall on the ratepayers of Northallerton and Romanby in the form of an additional precept.

Both Northallerton Town Council and Romanby Parish Council pay the burial committee about £10,000 a year.

But the expansion work means the burial committee needs about £33,000 a year, 55 burials at the new price.

Mr Pelter said: "The only other way the money could be found would be to hike up the precept. There is no alternative."

He said the new cost, which comes into effect immediately, compared with about £800 for burials in cemeteries in Harrogate and Middlesbrough, £600 in York and £500 in Darlington.