Soil dumped on grave. spreads further
TOWN hall officials are still investigating an embarrassing blunder that upset a Newbury man when workmen dumped a pile of earth on his parents grave. Newbury Town Council apologised to Phil Brazier, of Doveton Way, in last week's Newbury Weekly News, after partially covering his father's grave, and a plaque for his mother, in Newtown Road cemetery After receiving assurances that the earth would be moved, Mr Brazier was stunned to return to the grave on Wednesday evening last week, only to find the soil had spread even further He said: "To me this demonstrates that the council is big on words, but not so big on actions. A simple instruction to the workmen to remove the soil from the grave first would have sufficed. Instead the pile has been tackled from the middle." Workmen had been hired by the town council on a £40,000 job to make the site safe, after a survey found pits and loose gravestones, which have been responsible for deaths in other
parts of the country Town council chief executive Tim Smith explained that the work was essential and urgent. after years of neglect by former owner West Berkshire Council. Of the contractor's actions, he said: "It's incompetent, and I am not happy about it at all," he said, "I will be finding out why it went so stupidly wrong. "I think this error is because of someone giving a member of the public an assurance, and I think we're better than that. We've fallen short of our standards."
Deputy mayor Mike Rodger, who keeps an eye on burials as chairman of community services at the town hall, was also dismayed. and will be raising the matter of access at Newtown Road cemetery - which is only open by appointment owing to the hazards - at the next meeting on October 8 at the town hail. However, Mr Smith said that visitors only called to tend graves on average once every -tao or three months, and that plans for the cemetery were moving forward.
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