MP rejects toppling grave fears

Councils have been checking potentially unsafe graves

Families are being forced to pay out money needlessly to shore up gravestones deemed dangerous by "over zealous" local councils, an MP claims.

John Mann says no-one has been killed by falling headstones in churchyards in the past 10 years.

Yet families are being forced to pay for graves to be made safe in local council graveyards because of "inaccurate" risk assessment tests.

The Local Government Association said most councils paid for grave safety.

An LGA spokesman said most cemetries were owned by local authorities and "in the majority of cases" those authorities had covered the cost of making headstones safe.

Where the owners of plots had been charged "these costs are reasonable and it would be unfair to generalise from one authority alone", he added.

Headstones are made safe by a process known as "staking", in which wooden stakes are driven into the ground next to the headstones to prevent them toppling over.

'Financial incentive'

But after paying for an independent "topple test" at a graveyard in his Bassetlaw constituency, Mr Mann claims 95% of headstone staking is unneccessary.

"Millions of pounds is wasted and it causes tremendous upset for the families," the Bassetlaw MP told BBC News.

The "topple tests" are contracted out to private companies and there is a "financial incentive for them to deem everything unsafe", added Mr Mann.

The MP says he is hoping to become accredited as a gravestone "topple tester" so that he can independently check whether head stones need to be shored up.

'Over-zealous'

Mr Mann is urging people who think they have been the victim of "inaccurate" topple-testing to consider taking their local authority to court.

"These things simply don't fall on people. There is much more chance of people dying on their way to church," added Mr Mann.

New health and safety guidelines for gravestones were issued in 2004 after reports of five deaths caused by falling headstones.

But Mr Mann said councils were being "tremendously over zealous" in their application of the rules and "a whole industry" had sprung up around "topple-testing" of graves.

He said the graves being tested were often too small to topple over and cause injury let alone death - but they were still being "staked" by private contractors, at a cost of "hundreds of pounds" to berieved families.

"This isn't happening in church graveyards where there are heavier stones, it is happening with five-years-old and 10-year-old memorials because of over-zealous councils who don't understand risk assessment.

"There is a bigger safety problem from branches and trees."

Culture minister Gerry Sutcliffe told MPs on Monday figures on deaths caused by gravestones were not recorded centrally.

But according to the Ecclesiastical Insurance Group, there have been no claims relating to deaths caused by falling gravestones in the past 10 years, he added.

The minister said he would raise Mr Mann's concerns with the Church Commissioner, Middlesbrough MP, Stuart Bell.