PERSHORE Town Council has been working hard to get the town’s cemetery up to scratch after a Facebook group campaigning to clean it up attracted more than 600 members.

The group calls for a cleaner and tidier cemetery and many members have posted photographs illustrating overgrown areas.

Mark Barratt, who opened the Facebook group, visits his mother’s grave at Pershore Cemetery every month from South West Devon. He said he wants a public meeting with the town council to discuss the cemetery. Mr Barratt, who visited the cemetery last Monday, said: “The place was run down and the grass was overgrown. It looked abandoned.

“At the end of the day my mother is buried there. The Facebook site is a call for the people of Pershore to look after the cemetery and make it the place it was.”

The council says that the recent bad weather had hampered the upkeep on the site, which contains 7,516 plots, and that maintenance work had now been carried out.

However, Pete Challenger, of Monks Close, Pershore, is also unhappy with the appearance of the site and said the weather was no excuse.

He said: “My mum is buried there. I first complained in October 2010 and I think it has gone down hill since then. I last visited the site on Sunday and I don’t except this excuse about the weather. Something needs to be done.”

Pershore Town Council admitted to a backlog of work on the site but said its cemetery committee conducted inspections prior to a meeting on Wednesday, June 6 and had since instigated a programme of work.

Ann Dobbins, clerk of Pershore Town Council, said: “Routine maintenance work, such as grass cutting, has been severely hampered following the recent prolonged wet weather. This has led to a backlog. More dry weather can only improve the situation and we would ask residents and family members to bear with us while we continue with this backlog of work.”