Cemetery plans given green light

Mar 28 2008 by Katie Campling, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

COUNCILLORS have given final approval to plans to spend £8.2m improving bereavement services in Kirklees.

Kirklees Cabinet members rubber-stamped plans to invest cash in the area’s cemeteries and crematoria.

The plans were announced last month and include creating a new cemetery at Fenay Bridge and a £3m crematorium in Dewsbury.

Huddersfield Crematorium will be modernised and £700,000 will be spent on improving cemeteries at Slaithwaite and Batley.

Improvements at Slaithwaite will include better access for the disabled, more parking and an area for natural burials. The work will start in August and finish in December.

At Batley planning permission has been granted for more burial spaces and there will be a new ‘Angels Corner’ area for burial of babies. Studies are also being carried out to see if natural burials can be catered for in a woodland area of the cemetery.

Work is planned to start in 2009 and be finished by March 2010.

A planning application for the new cemetery at Fenay Bridge is due to be submitted in May. It is hoped work will finish by December this year.

The new Dewsbury crematorium will be created on the existing site and is planned to be state of the art, designed to give people more choice and to be more environmentally friendly.

Construction is expected to start in April next year.

The final project to take shape will be improvements to Huddersfield Crematorium. Work will begin in April, 2011, and will include new memorial displays, upgrades to public areas so that relatives arriving are separate from those leaving and new, more environmentally friendly equipment.

Speaking at the Cabinet meeting council leader Clr Robert Light said it was time bereavement services in Kirklees were improved.

He added: “It is fair to say that over the last few years we have not had first-class bereavement services. This will give us top-class facilities, I believe the best in West Yorkshire.”