Work has started on improving Buxton Cemetery
High Peak Borough Council has started work on improving and repairing paths at Buxton Cemetery.
The authority hopes that the work should be finished before the end of the year.
A High Peak Borough Council spokesperson said: “We're working with Alliance Norse to extend Buxton Cemetery and improve/repair some of the existing paths.
The site will remain open during the works which will start this week and will take approx. 10 weeks.”
Planning permission was granted for the ‘lawful development certificate for construction of footpaths’ back in 2024.
The cemetery, on Ashbourne Road, dates back more than a century and in that time demand for burials has increased and all available land needs to be used.
A spokesperson for the council said: “According to the ONS, High Peak’s population is predicted to increase in the future and the ageing population is predicted to expand.
“The result of this is a higher need for burials due to a larger number of deaths occurring.”
The council say there is a ‘need for further burial space at Buxton Cemetery which will be required in the near future’.
The path work is only part of the work being undertaken at the cemetery.
In August of this year Alliance Environmental Services Ltd in conjunction with Cheshire East Bereavement Services on behalf of High Peak Borough Council completed a safety survey of the memorials in Buxton Cemetery and 75 were deemed unsafe.
A High Peak Borough Council spokesperson said: “We are responsible to ensure the safety of all visitors to the cemeteries under our control and following fatalities and injuries in other parts of the country caused by falling memorials, we are following advice by the Health and Safety Executive the Ministry of Justice.”
The council says that any memorials found to be unstable will be ‘temporarily secured with a memorial support or will be cordoned off; a structural engineer will assess older, larger memorials’.
They added: “If a memorial is found to be unstable, the memorial owner may choose to pay for repairs to be conducted by an approved memorial mason. In default AES Ltd may lower it into the ground or seek authority to lay it flat.
“Kerb sets may be buried so that only the top is visible or placed within the grave area.”