Call for profits from funerals at crematorium to be used for restarting bereavement service

Bosses at Durham Crematorium have been urged to reopen the facility’s Book of Remembrance, which has been shut to the public through most of the virus outbreak.

And they have even raised the prospect of hiring new staff to make sure it can be available for grieving families.

“In March we’re going to be coming up to the first anniversary of people who have passed away from Covid-19 and especially people who weren’t able to have relatives at their funerals,” said Durham County Councillor Amanda Hopgood.

“I suspect we’re going to have a lot of people who want to physically see a book and what’s been written in and I think given the months we’ve had it’s not unreasonable to come up with some way or appointments system where people can book to see the page.

“We need to think about the personal loss people have at the moment and what we can do to alleviate that – if it’s just being able to go and see the book in person we should do everything we can to facilitate that.”

Cllr Hopgood was speaking at a meeting of the county council’s Central Durham Crematorium Joint Committee on January 27, which was held by videolink and broadcast via YouTube.

Limited space, staffing and the need for regular cleaning has meant some services and offers at the crematorium have had to be curtailed or limited over recent months.

However Cllr Hopgood pointed to an expected surplus of almost £1million for 2020/21 – more than £200,000 above budgeted expectations – as evidence of resources to overcome any problems in the short term.

Bereavement services manager Graham Harrison said: “[The Book of Remembrance] was closed due to government guidelines, [although we also] have an online version.

“The situation we have at the moment is we’re very short staffed and have to do deep cleans between every other service, which doesn’t free up any staff members to be able to open the book.

“But we can look at options.”

Neil Foster, the panel’s chairman, said he would work with Harrison to try and find a solution.

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