7:10am Wednesday 10th June 2009
By Jack Blanchard
COUNCIL workers have billed a Worcester man £440 for his own gravestone – more than a decade after his death.
Dines Green couple Ross and Jennifer Williams were shocked to get a letter from Worcester City Council last week addressed to Mrs Williams’s late father George Weaver, pictured above, asking him if he wished to renew the lease on his granite memorial plaque at Astwood Cemetery.
Mr Weaver died in 1998.
Mr Williams, aged 71, said: “They’re writing to a dead man, asking him for £440. It’s disgusting.
“My wife’s ill already, and she was so upset when she opened the letter.
“She’s hardly slept since with worrying about it.
“If they had addressed it to me or my wife, it would have been fine. But to see that letter to her dad, who’s been dead 10 years, well it just brought it all back.
“I went to the cemetery office and the lady said she was sorry. But I want to know how many more letters are going out like this?”
Mr Weaver was cremated at the council-run cemetery and crematorium on Tintern Avenue, Astwood Road, following his death more than 10 years ago.
Mr Williams said: “I went into the office at the time and they offered me this plaque, but nobody told me it was only for 10 years. As far as I was concerned, it was there forever.”
The letter from the council, dated June 1, says the deceased man has three months to pay the £440 or his plaque will be removed.
Mr Williams said: “I’m not going to pay it. My wife said she’s not going to. We’re both pensioners – £440 is almost half a month’s pay.”
Ian Yates, Worcester City Council parks and cemeteries manager, said the council would be investigating what had happened.
He said: “We will investigate the background, and we will be in touch with Mr Williams directly. There’s a lot of notes and records going back 10 years we need to double-check, and we’ll be getting on with that straight away.”
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