Plans to go in for new cemetery land
A TOWN council will soon be submitting a planning application for new cemetery land after a major obstacle seems to have been removed.
Bourne Town Council has been looking at a plot of land close the cemetery in South Road as burial space is running out at the current site.
The plans were dealt a blow in February when the Environment Agency ruled out most of the land around the town, including the proposed South Road site, for a burial plot due to fears of contaminating the water supply, which is used to supply homes and businesses in the area.
But now the council has been told that the Environment Agency's ground water and contaminated land team has looked at the plot and says that the risk of contamination is negligible.
Members of the council's amenities committee decided at a meeting on Tuesday, in the town hall, to submit a planning application to finally see if the bid is viable.
The council does not own the plot of land and it is not necessary under planning rules to own a site to submit an application.
Town clerk Nelly Jacobs hopes to have submitted the planning application to South Kesteven District Council next week.
She said: "We are putting in a planning application. We may find that the conditions of the application are to be too much for us to proceed but we will never know unless we put in an application."
The council had been looking at a site to extend the cemetery for some time and approached the Environment Agency for advice on the site close to the cemetery.
Councillors was told then told that it would have concentrate its search on land to the north of Bourne on the A15 up to Cawthorpe, or up to Dyke.
Regulations state that no burial should take place within 250m of a bore hole or spring.
The council, which does not have a statutory duty to provide a cemetery, asked for the Environment Agency to look again. The geology and geography of the site was considered.
A spokesman for the Environment Agency said: "Based on information it has demonstrated that the risk to groundwater sources from the cemetery expansion is negligible. Therefore we don't object to the expansion of the cemetery."
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Weather for Bourne
Friday 25 May 2012
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Temperature: 11 C to 24 C
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