Penguin68

The really sad thing about all this is that there is a good case to be made that Southwark's plans need oversight and attention to make sure that (1) they do (just) what they have announced they will be doing and that (2) their planned replanting makes sense in terms of ecology and of changing climactic conditions (for whatever cause). Orderly control and oversight of what should be an orderly process is paramount for what are (for those on either side of this debate) important local public spaces. But this has been diverted by hyperbole, spin and half truth such that attention to what the council is actually planning and doing has been lost in contemplation of the very worst things it would be possible for any authority to do; with those who do care about the spaces, as cemeteries, having to fight stupid battles against ill informed supporters of what is (undoubtedly) a very heart felt, but also, frankly a very personal campaign by someone with an entirely different agenda to most of us. I want the best for the cemeteries, he wants no cemeteries.

Maybe someone (hopefully unbiased) could explain what proportion of the substantial (over 150mm diameter) trees now growing in the area to be landscaped are to be removed, and what their replacement policy is to be (what type of tree to be replaced by what (other?) types of trees). How many (if any) of the trees being removed are being removed for safety or other 'practical' reasons (i.e. they now offer some threat because of disease or damage or too close-growing to other trees or are now considered an inappropriate planting for the site?) By the way, the fact that the council does not intend to replace mature trees with mature trees, but to plant saplings (presumably the right saplings in the right places) to grow is a natural part of landscaping and tree management. Indeed it is good management to have staggered ages of trees to allow for succession. If you are dealing with trees, you deal with the long-term. That is normal and good practice. 'Instant gardening' is not, normally, necessarily consistent with 'good gardening' - and mature specimen trees are phenomenally expensive.

I still do not see why the Church has any rights over debating about normal cemetery management (removing unplanned scrub growth). This cannot be seen as a 'substantial alteration' to consecrated ground - you might just as well argue that the removal of fly-tipped debris, or even the mowing of grass, would equally require their authority. And the Church cannot set sizes on what trees are to be cut - the Council can, as part of its tree preservation work, but not the Church. It might require, where memorial trees have been planted, that these be preserved, but in the main this is not the case (and I'm not sure memorial (as opposed to landscaping) trees are planted on public (formerly pauper's) graves. Nor does the Church have a specific remit over private graves, save where these are, inter alia, on consecrated ground. But make one thing absolutely clear, the Church is never going to ally with the desires of the interest group to stop all burials and 'wild' the cemeteries.

Call the police (non emergency number) to check whether such a scheme is operating in your area - if it's not then a heads-up should alert the police to possibly worrying activity. If it is in any way an 'official' position then the individual should be carrying ID.

The irony of this meeting with the Church is that removal of self-seeded trees and shrubs falls absolutely outside the Church's remit, for consecrated ground in Municipal cemeteries, of having to grant (or not) a Faculty for 'substantial alteration'. So even if Lewis managed to execute some stay on the re-use issue (not the Church's general policy), the removal of the trees cannot be stopped by the Church. Nor could any work not in a consecrated area. Since it was the removal of the trees which is the prime mover in all this (with concern about ancient burials somewhat of a side-show) efforts with the Church, while ensuring an orderly approach by Southwark to its plans, cannot 'save the trees'.

You need to distinguish between roosting and nesting. All birds roost at night (owls excepted). The green parakeets roost in COC.

Birds won't be nesting now. There are sufficient trees locally that when they do come to nest, they will find somewhere appropriate.

edborders wrote:- The Council must obtain consent from the Consistory Court of the Diocese in the form of a faculty before any works within the consecrated areas may take place This is not (in London at least) so for local authority graveyards, although it is so for parish churches and churchyards. In fact a Diocesan Faculty (granted by the Diocesan Chancellor via application to the Diocesan Registry) must be granted for 'any substantial alteration to consecrated land within a municipal cemetery including removal of headstones and kerbsets'. In this case the 'consecrated land' is being restored to its original condition by the removal of scrub growth. I do not believe the church can interfere with the cutting down of trees in a muncipal cemetery. Issues of mounding, where this is not removing headstones and kerbsets may not be relevant - it might not be a 'substantial alteration'. However new roadways and paths may be considered a substantial alteration, if in a consecrated area (not all of a municipal cemetery will be consecrated, although areas with public graves will be). I suspect that the restoration of existing paths now overgrown might not be considered a 'substantial alteration'. If your advice is that a full Consistory Court is required I believe that to be in error - it is a far more standard procedure - it should be noted that the Church is generally in favour of re-use (assuming that bodies are treated with respect). The Church is considering (probably favourably) the move to lift and deepen from the previous reburial in (different) consecrated grounds - but this has not yet been approved. Mounding, of course, would not require re-burial. However the law regarding re-use of Private Graves is different in Southwark from the rest of London. Indeed, re-use of private graves may actually be forbidden in Southwark, until legislation is changed. You may also wish to note that Faculties are granted for specific areas, and are not (unless so specified) a blanket approval for all consecrated areas within a specific cemetery. Here is something you could focus on to keep Southwark straight.

They said that it doesn't need permission from the Church of England to cut down the trees and mound over the graves in Camberwell Old Cemetery. They don't. Church permission is only required when bodies are to be disturbed - and then ONLY for public burials. Which stands to reason. The Church believes that bodies once buried should not then be disturbed, unless clearly necessary. Cutting down trees and mounding over burials doesn't disturb the bodies buried there. Southwark needs permission from nobody (other than its own councilors) to manage its own cemeteries where this doesn't involve disturbing public burials.

If you were doing a new build or refurb for your business I suspect that M&S will have no financial stake in this until it comes to final shopfitting - when presumably they will also start to pay rent. In current circumstances not rushing into a financial commitment might well be the right thing here, so it may well be that they in fact don't have any urgency to set-up. This is a very different circumstance than faced by a business where this might be their only, or main, or most significant trading site.

It is your history and and your beauty that will be lost. Join us. And yet he specifically wants us to lose the option of future history by wanting to ban future burials. After 75 years, the needs of the present trump the memories (almost certainly no longer with living people) of the past. And the overgrown scrubland, with shattered graves and the residues of fly-tipping, is not everyone's idea of beauty (granted there are those that think than anything living and growing, apart from people, is beautiful).

the sorts of people that account for in excess of 2000 deaths annually in the UK. Actually, the last year (to June 2105) that is being reported shows 1700 road accident deaths (any are bad, but not 'in excess of 2000') - excess speed is seen as a contributory factor in about a quarter, as I read the figures, although these do come from RoSPA. Most of these deaths are not, as implied, of course in South London, nor are (many) linked to misuse of mobile phones, at speed. Hyperbole, in general, does not make good cases.

That's a really helpful clarification. Thanks

If you are driving from the North West come down via the M6 to Birmingham and then the M40 through Oxford and onto the M25 either to the M4 and to ED via Earls Court and cross the river at Battersea Bridge or divert to cross the river at Kew and thus to ED on the South Circular or stay on the M25 and come up via the A23 and Croydon, longer but completely avoids the centre.

The church hasn't told us that. And neither has the Council up until now. We have called the Church to for confirmation. It might be true. I might not be true. The Church is involved only when public burials are dug-up. It does not have to give permission for normal maintenance and ground works. If public graves are disturbed (i.e. bodies disinterred) that is an offence without church permission. Where Private burials are concerned, this is covered by Section 74 of the 2007 London Local Authorities Act, and assumes that private rights have been cancelled under section 9 of the Greater London (General Powers) Act of 1976. No burial disturbed may be less than 75 years old, the act requires 'lift and deepen', where bodies already interred will then be buried under new interments. What you are describing as happening would not in fact be covered by constraints as described for either Public or Private burials. It is normal (if much neglected) cemetery maintenance. It would be better to ensure contractors were meeting those requirements than failing to understand the actual legal position.

Lewis Schaffer has chosen to PM me as follows:- Do you work for the council or one of the contractors? I think you should state that you are not a disinterested party if that is the case. Do you have an interested in keep burial going in the cemeteries? Lewis Schaffer Nunhead, Save Southwark Woods For clarity - I have never worked for any council or building contractor. I have no interest (in the sense of partiality) for cemetery burial - indeed my personal preference would to chose not to be buried - I would prefer cost free corpse disposal, for me, as part of the normal refuse collection service. I do have an interest in the truth, in open dealing, in an absence of unnecessary hyperbole. I have lived very close to COC for close to 30 years and greatly enjoy its amenity, as a working cemetery, and wish it to continue as such. I find it offensive if, even privately, it is assumed that the only opposition to this pressure group is from those taking benefit from the council's policy. I do not normally disclose PMs (for obvious reasons) but this PM has insulted me.

From what we can tell, the Council says it doesn't need Church permission to cut down the trees, dump the dirt over poor people's grave, drive over the bodies of dead children and remove their headstones The council doesn't need Church permission to do its job of cemetery maintenance, nor to remove grave furniture (either for safety or to temporarily remove and replace for maintenance purposes). It does need Church permission for 'public' graves to disinter for any reason (other I think than an exhumation under warrant by the police). So it will only be 'driving over the bodies of children' in the sense that it is driving over the ground 6ft or so under which children are buried (which is what their mowers do many times a year). But then there have been many links on this thread setting out exactly what councils have to do under law - I referenced the key page 12 of one attachment which sets out all the prohibitions on councils in orderly cemetery re-use for burial purposes, one of which is to make a clear record of where bodies are inhumed when grave markers are moved or covered.

is because it's too narrow for a car and a cyclist to pass safely at all times Sadly that is also true on the roads where it is allowed - such as Melford Road, particularly when there is a bus using it!

A number of one way roads (for cars) now allow cycles to travel against the car flow. Cyclists are beginning to act as if this applies to all local one-way roads. On occasions cars turn following cyclists, not realising that the rules are different for different types of road user. (And cyclists anyway - some of them - rather feel that rules don't really apply to them). I am not surprised that these changes are encouraging local confusion. And yes, it isn't safe.

Your choice. Which is precisely what you wish to take from us.

I wonder why this group is so mournfully protective of the long dead, with no one left alive to mourn them, but so despises the wishes of those who are about to be bereaved and wish to have somewhere local where they can mourn and commemorate their loved ones?

No, exhumation means to removing remains from a grave - which is what they will be doing. Southwark's own document use the word. It is true that the any remains they find will be re-interred either in the same grave or somewhere else So the 'exhumation' - for private graves - will be for a matter, probably, of a few minutes, perhaps half an hour as the grave is dug deeper, the bones bagged and put at the bottom of the newly deepened grave. Not exactly what I'd call an exhumation. For public graves (where bodies are already buried together) the 'out of soil' experience will be longer, but with no other intent than reburial. 'Exhumation', whilst technically correct for the first part of the action, gives quite a different meaning to what is actually intended by Southwark.

The most reliable figures on crime (but not to a postcode or electoral district level) are from the National Crime Survey - all others will be biased by under-reporting to or recording by police. Those figures which stem from insurance claims will tell you only about insured people whose losses are above their excess.

dbboy - this is exactly what they are proposing, exhumations No, they are proposing re-interment - either in exactly the same spot, but deeper, or in other consecrated ground. Exhumation is all about removing a body from the ground, normally for e.g. forensic (sometimes historical) examination. Exhumation is not, in itself, about (obviously) re-burial. And re-interment of very long dead bodies, without traceable relatives to object. If I declared I wanted to dig-up a row of trees in a park you might (I am sure you would) object. If I said I wanted to re-site or re-plant trees there might still be objections, but of a very different sort, and some who would object to trees being dug up might well not to them being re-sited and re-planted. Words (as you well know) are important.

The attached document shows that the two possible strategies, where bodies are encountered, is 'lift and deepen' for private graves, where the body remains in situ but at a greater depth, and 'lift and re-inter' for public graves where the bodies are re-buried in consecrated ground (and only done with the permission of the Church). In both cases it is expected that the bodies will be treated with respect, and will be dead no less than 75 years (and often, in the case for instance of the wilded parts of Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries) for considerably longer. I doubt, in fact, whether such actions will in fact cause a furore (as they would for current and recent graves, which are not included in this policy). For those with the time, page 12 of the document linked above shows in great details the necessary constraints placed on authorities who wish to re-use graves - worth reading as it shows a very different attitude to remains than that implied or indeed stated by the anti-cemetery lobby.