Changes made after wrong graves used for burials

A council has made changes to ensure no one is buried in the wrong grave again after two mix-ups at a cemetery.

Gloucester City Council chiefs apologised earlier this year after mistakes led to two people being buried in the wrong places at Coney Hill Cemetery and Crematorium.

The council is now working on digitising its cremation and burial records, and the name of the deceased will be placed on the grave with a metal stand ahead of burial.

At a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, councillor Declan Wilson said: "We have engaged with the families and we have apologised to them."

The Local Democracy Reporting Service reports that councillor Alastair Chambers first raised awareness of the mistakes in March after Sallyann Anderson, who paid for a plot beside her parents' graves in 2018, visited the cemetery to discover another Sallyann had been buried in it.

In April, she told the BBC she was "happy" an exhumation was going to take place.

At Wednesday's meeting, Mr Chambers thanked the council for making changes to ensure people are buried in the correct graves, and asked if council chiefs would apologise on behalf of Gloucester City Council.

Mr Wilson said he was happy to put the council's apology on the record.

He said the council created a spreadsheet for every purchase of reserve graves going all the way back to 1976.

There are now plans to move all of the old records into an electronic cremation and burial system, rather than having them on paper.

Mr Chambers said that while it was good to see changes have been made, there would still be a need for burials to be double checked.

"Given the nature around it, it's really good to get the name tag of the person that is buried there," he said.

"But please don't forget you buried a Sallyann in the wrong Sallyann's grave. So double checks still need to be done on that."

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