RESIDENTS have failed to prevent a graveyard being extended.
Planners yesterday voted to allow St Nicholas’s Church in Upper Cumberworth to expand its cemetery into land behind 17 to 41 Hollybank Avenue.
The church bought the 130m by 20m plot in 1964 for future cemetery use.
Hollybank Avenue residents were allowed to use the land to extend their gardens, in return for peppercorn rent.
Kirklees Council’s Heavy Woollen Planning Sub-committee voted yesterday to allow the church to take the land back – despite objections from residents.
Alan Smith of Hollybank Avenue told councillors that the “atmosphere in the gardens was bound to change” if burials were to take place just over the wall.
Clr Jim Dodds also spoke against the graveyard extension at the meeting at Dewsbury Town Hall.
“All the residents understand that legally this application to return the land to the church is correct,” said the Denby Dale Conservative.
“But they can not understand why the church needs the land when the current cemetery has vast areas of open space.”
However, a church representative told the meeting that there was room for only two more burials in the cemetery.
Sub-committee member Clr Elaine Ward backed the church’s plan.
“The residents have enjoyed extensions to their gardens since 1964 knowing that at some point that would be taken away,” she said.
The sub-committee voted overwhelmingly to allow the graveyard expansion to go ahead.
