New £3m Cardiff cemetery approved to address grave shortage

Cardiff Council has approved plans for a new cemetery it claims will provide burial space for up to 40 years.

The authority's planning committee has approved the development which will be located north of the M4 at Thornhill, just 650m from its busiest cemetery.

It comes after the council's bereavement service warned in March that the city could run out of burial spaces without a new facility.

The land is owned by the council and will allow up to 7,500 burials.

With about 1,350 people buried by the council every year and 40,000 new homes planned to be built in the coming years, a council report found there was a risk the city could run out of space to bury its dead.

The current Thornhill cemetery - which deals with about 700 burials a year, of which 200 are new graves - is due to run out of space in 2020.

The new cemetery, approved by the planning committee on Wednesday, will cost about £3m and provide enough space for about 3,500 full-size graves and 4,000 cremated remains graves.

Facilities will include car parking spaces, a memorial garden, public toilets and a pond with water lilies and fish.