Lib Dems launch petition to stop unwanted crematorium at Mepal

Liberal Democrats on East Cambridgeshire District Council have launched a petition against Conservative plans to build a crematorium on the site of the former Mepal Outdoor Centre.

The plans will be voted on at the full council meeting of East Cambridgeshire District Council on Thursday (22 May).

The cost of the scheme has ballooned from the original £8 million to an eye-watering £13 million. The money will come from contributions required from developers when they build new homes, which should have been spent on projects supporting local development. And even then, the council will need to borrow three quarters of a million pounds to cover the cost.

Cllr Lorna Dupré, who leads the Liberal Democrat & Independent Group on East Cambridgeshire District Council, is one of the two councillors who represent Mepal on the council. She says:

“This site is the furthest one can be in East Cambridgeshire without being in Fenland, and it’s just twelve minutes from the well-established commercial crematorium at March. A crematorium at Mepal will be of little use to the majority of the population of East Cambridgeshire, who have closer facilities to hand in Huntingdon, Cambridge, Saffron Walden, or Bury St Edmunds.

Many residents have commented on the smell from the enormous next-door biodigester on the A142, and the thundering of the aggregate lorries from the gravel extraction sites across the road.

Conservative councillors seem to think this facility will be a money-spinner for them. But Dignity, a large national provider that runs the crematorium in March, aren’t going to take this lying down and let their investment go to waste. They can easily afford to respond to the price war that the council is proposing to launch against them.

I’m also not convinced that it is the role of a council to build and run commercial facilities in order to compete with established private providers in a challenging market. The Conservative party used to say proudly that it was the party of small government—but there’s absolutely nothing ‘small government’ about this commercial venture.”

The crematorium project got off to a very bad start, with senior councillors instructing council officers to work on it in secret for eighteen months before it was finally leaked to a local journalist.

It has been clear all along that the scheme is not intended to meet a genuine local need; its purpose is purely to turn ring-fenced money from developers into ready cash. Those developers’ contributions could be better spent on educational and health facilities to support the huge developments in North Ely, the utterly desperate need for new health facilities in Soham, better and more accessible playgrounds, or safer cycle and pedestrian routes.

The petition is online at www.change.org/Stop-Mepal-Crematorium

Papers for Thursday’s council meeting are at https://eastcambs.gov.uk/node/1406