Graveyards (Health and Safety)

Traditionally, the Adjournment debate is the graveyard slot in the House of Commons day, so I am glad my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) has been able to make a lively contribution to it. I congratulate him on securing the debate, as this is a serious issue. I know that the topic causes a great deal of local concern and anger. It is undeniable that cemeteries can hide safety hazards—uneven kerbstones, trees, and the risks associated with unstable memorials. Since 2000, 21 serious incidents caused by falling gravestones and memorials have been reported to the Health and Safety Executive, including three fatalities, two involving young children. Indeed, since 1978, there have been eight fatalities, but I shall refer to the three of them that have occurred since 2000. In 2000 in Harrogate, a 100-year-old sandstone headstone fell on to a boy aged six. It was balancing on a plinth 300 mm wide, and had been slumped at an angle for many years. In Burnley in 2003, a young boy aged nine died when he and a number of boys were collecting conkers in a cemetery and he was crushed by a falling double-sized headstone weighing more than a quarter of a tonne. In Salford in 2003, a young man aged 19 was crushed by a 1,300 mm high, 1.5 tonne headstone, described at the inquest as ““huge””. These incidents are undeniably serious, but they need to be balanced against the number of memorials across the country and the number of people who visit a cemetery each year. That shows that in reality, the risk of suffering serious injury or worse is very low indeed. So it is undeniable that there is a risk, but we must get into proportion and balance the nature of that risk. There are risks in doing many things in life and some are potentially serious, but we need to be proportionate in how we respond to them. We need to ensure that burial ground operators can make simple, sensible assessments of the risk and take proportionate steps to control it. Let me say emphatically—I hope that local councillors in particular will hear this—that in the past, over-zealous precautions have been taken to control what is in reality a low risk. Unnecessary distress has been caused to bereaved families, and a more proportionate view of health and safety is necessary. There must be an end to ““topple-testing vandalism”” by over-zealous operators and some local council officials. It must stop. Operators have a duty under health and safety legislation to take simple measures to ensure that this risk is appropriately managed. However, in recent years the Health and Safety Commission and the Ministry of Justice, among others, have taken steps to remind burial authorities of the need to manage risks in a proportionate way. As my hon. Friend is aware, in 2004, the then chair of the HSC, Sir Bill Callaghan, wrote to all local authority chief executives asking them to take a personal interest in this matter. Early last year, that exercise was repeated. I am pleased to report that since those interventions, there does seem to have been some improvement in the situation. For example, more operators have a better understanding of the need to take a more balanced and sensitive approach. In some cases, risk management is now carried out more sensitively, pragmatically and sensibly. However, as my hon. Friend has said, there are still examples of an inflexible or insensitive approach being taken. In some cases, little or no attempt is being made to contact the bereaved before topple-testing or staking causes problems for a memorial. In others, a narrow reading of the guidance has led to over-precautionary measures, such as the laying down of very small memorials that are unlikely to hurt anyone. A few years ago in Atherstone, in my own constituency, relatives came to visit graves and found a whole series of memorials toppled. It was distressing and wrong, so I can well understand the anguish that people in Bassetlaw and in many other parts of the country have felt, particularly bereaved relatives and those who have been visiting their loved one's memorial for many years, tending and looking after it, only to find that it has been staked or laid down because it has been deemed unsafe, without proper consultation, prior explanation or the opportunity for them to take action that might have dealt more appropriately with any concerns. The vast majority of memorials are not in imminent danger of collapse, and a few simple tests can be used to check their safety. Often, a simple visual inspection, which requires minimal training and takes little time, will suffice. Frequent checks can offer an early warning and identify potentially unstable memorials. If the burial ground manager still has a concern, a simple hand-push of the memorial will indicate whether it is wobbly or there is a likelihood of toppling. Those simple and unobtrusive tests enable the risk of toppling to be easily evaluated without causing unnecessary damage to memorials. If there is a potential problem, the relatives can be told about it and given a chance to put it right. One other test can be, and is, used to assess the risk—the topple test, which my hon. Friend mentioned. I shall deal with the problem of staking at more length. The topple test should be a test of last resort. It was originally identified to enable monument masons to have a test that would enable them to know that a monument is firmly in the ground. It was not originally intended to apply to older memorials that have been in place for a long time. I know that my hon. Friend has recently become a qualified topple-tester; he is an example to all of us of a lifelong learner. In a debate on this matter back in 2005, he put on the record what the topple test involves, so I do not need to repeat that. What I can say is that the test can play a role, but that it should be used only when it is clear that it is needed and with due warning to relatives, if they are able to be contacted. It is not necessary to have armies of testers walking around graveyards with a strain gauge checking all memorials at will—that is overzealous nonsense. Memorials must not be toppled unnecessarily; they should be staked only when it is necessary to do so. The excess of zeal from some operators who seem to want to justify their fee must end. Many small gravestones should not need a topple-test, and it is certainly very unlikely that they would need to be staked. I am told that there are cases where perfectly stable older memorials have been irreparably weakened by a topple test. When stakes are driven in by power hammers, that in itself can, as my hon. Friend says, cause the memorial to become dangerous. If a memorial is assessed as being in imminent danger of collapse, action should of course be taken to minimise that risk. That should be done sensitively, with due regard for the owners, and for the relatives of the deceased. Laying a headstone flat is understandably highly distressing to relatives and to the local community, particularly when it is poorly carried out. In many cases, more desirable, remedial actions can be taken; some councils have devised better stabilisation devices that blend in with the cemetery and do not cause the sort of hazards that my hon. Friend has identified. Where the memorial is of historical importance, the authority may well direct its staff to take appropriate corrective action, and in some cases, it may be possible for local monument masons or council workers to address weak foundations. In each case, it is better that the owner, in the sense of the bereaved family, should be consulted, where possible, before any action is taken. Sometimes they cannot be contacted and the council will then have to take a view on the safety issue, but that is what officials are employed to do; they are employed to make sensible decisions. I recognise that that requires a judgment to be made, especially in respect of older graves. Council officials sometimes think that they would rather rely on an outside body to make the decision for them, but it is their responsibility to make decisions, to take a view and to get appropriate advice. A reasonable first step might be to contact the stonemason business that erected the memorial, if it is still inexistence, or to seek the advice of another local mason. They may be best placed to stabilise the memorial, for example by repairing weak foundations, or to take temporary steps to stabilise it. That can give time to alert owners to the problem, what further action the authority wants to be taken and the time scale for taking it. If there is an imminent danger, of course action needs to be promptly taken. In other words, judgments have to be made. A number of guidelines are available to help assess and mitigate risks, but because the bodies involved are so diverse—they range from municipal authorities and local councils to the Church of England, representatives of memorial masons, cemetery managers and various private companies that have guidelines—there is no single source of guidance. That is why the Health and Safety Executive has been tasked to work with those bodies to re-examine producing common guidance. I can assure my hon. Friend that any common guidance produced will be goal-setting, not prescriptive, and will encourage those best placed to understand fully and own the risks, to manage them effectively and to do so with a degree of sensitivity and, most importantly, with some common sense. It will aim to encourage the spread of good practice across the various organisations involved. I want to challenge a sometimes lazy, risk-averse culture that invokes inappropriate product-led solutions to complex problems that need addressing with greater care and sensitivity.