MONEY has been set aside to look at where future cremations will be held in the city after questions were asked about why the council is spending so much money on a study to find out what to do.

The future of cremations at the city’s Astwood Cemetery is currently in the balance and bosses at Worcester City Council revealed they are weighing up their options for the 170-plus-year-old site in what would be ‘one of the biggest projects for the council in some time.’

The council is contending with a mix of ageing furnaces that need to be replaced, falling demand for burials and cremations and dwindling space.

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The council said it was looking to spend up to £100,000 to help decide whether the facilities should be improved at Astwood Cemetery or even moved completely to a new site which was at first ‘eye-opening’ to some.

Questions were raised by concerned councillors that £100,000 was a lot of money to pay to get answers about the city’s crematorium which the council already knew.

But the committee eventually said it was reassured after learning the pot of money would be put aside for a ‘dedicated’ manager as well as a range of legal, planning, and environmental advice.

The council admits a new crematorium would come at a “significant” cost – with one council boss revealing the project could total between £12 and £15 million – while it would be cheaper to stay at a replaced or improved Astwood Cemetery.

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Cllr Owen Cleary said he could “see which way the wind was blowing” and Astwood would inevitably need to be redeveloped or a new crematorium would need to be built elsewhere.

“My worry was, do we really need to pay somebody one hundred grand to underline what we really already know?” he said at the environment committee meeting in the Guildhall on Tuesday (March 14).

Cllr Cleary said putting the money aside to pay for several strands of advice “made more sense.”

Lloyd Griffiths, the city council’s director of operations, said £100,000 would not be spent on just one consultant and would instead fund a ‘dedicated’ manager for the huge project as well as several strands of advice – including legal, environmental and planning – if needed.

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“This will be a major project for the council, whether it’s the redevelopment of Astwood or whether it’s redevelopment on another site,” he said. “This will probably be a project of scale that we’ve not seen in this council for some time.”

St John’s Cemetery is expected to be full in the next three years and the council believes Astwood Cemetery only has enough space for the next ten to 15 years.

The council also faces the challenge of needing to replace ageing furnaces – which have already exceeded their predicted 25-year life span.

It believes they will need to be replaced by 2027 at the latest.