Cemeteries and Crematoria Bylaw review

Cemeteries are places where people go to have quiet and solitude. They are also areas that steadily expand over time, and where later intervention can be extremely difficult, with headstones and burial sites expected to be left alone in almost all circumstances. Considering the current and future impacts on climate change, it is important that our cemeteries are environmentally friendly by design. In some cases, such as in natural burials, ensuring minimal environmental impact is specifically a part of the burial practice. 

Cemeteries can be important places for any and all members of the community, whether it’s to remember people or stories, or just for quiet and privacy. In order to serve these needs, they have to be open and welcoming to all of Whanganui’s citizens. This means both being inclusive to people of all faiths, cultures, and identities, and also being physically accessible and navigable to people of all abilities. 

Cemeteries and crematoria in the district need to be safe for visitors. People are not ‘on guard’ when visiting or attending an event in a cemetery, which means safety incidents can have more of an impact on victims. Safety incidents can occur in many ways, such as broken glass or pottery lying in the grass, or when people act in disruptive or aggressive ways, or drive unsafely.

As well as inclusivity and accessibility, comfort and general usability are important to make sure that the largest section of the community can get use out of our spaces. A lack of benches, rough and irregular paving, and poor signage and direction can all impact how comfortable of an experience using our cemeteries is.

Cemeteries are one of the primary ways our community remembers our past, both the people and the events that significantly impact us. Cemeteries need to be designed, built, maintained, and managed in a way that makes this possible, both for visitors and for people organising funerals or other events.

Many community members have made us aware of the fact that there is no dedicated space in our district for scattering ashes into water after somebody has been cremated. The only current option – using natural water sources like the Awa – has significant cultural barriers against introducing any part of a dead body. Our proposed solution to this is to implement a water feature specifically for this purpose, which would serve the needs of our community as well as adding to the atmosphere of the cemetery.

Maintenance of graves can be complicated because it can only take place with the consent of the owner of the plot and it is often unclear who the owner is or how to get in contact with them, particularly with older graves. While there are volunteer groups who clean and maintain graves, the question of ownership can prevent them from doing so. We are recommending that this rule be modified to allow the council to authorise maintenance of a grave once reasonable attempts have been made to contact the owner. 

The council does not intend to manage how people grieve or memorialise, however consumption of alcohol can lead to disruptive behaviour, litter, and safety issues if glass bottles are left behind. In some cases, restricting consumption of alcohol is a reliable way of minimising the secondary issues that follow on from it. In this case, our recommendation is that we only regulate the secondary issues – the disruptive behaviour and waste – rather than consumption of alcohol itself.

Currently, the use of cemeteries within the district, both for burial proceedings and as public spaces, is done through a number of documents.

These documents have been developed on an as-needed basis without a coherent strategy guiding them, and as a result they often overlap, or don’t include areas that they should, and it can be difficult to find specific regulations. We are now proposing to restructure the documents.

This would involve:

• a policy which creates the overall framework for our regulations,
• a bylaw which prescribes enforcement provisions,
•  and guidelines for each specific area.

The relevant documents would include:

• Cemeteries, Crematoria, Plaques and Memorials Bylaw(PDF, 666KB) – creates penalties and enforcement powers
• Cemeteries, Crematoria, Plaques and Memorials Policy(PDF, 720KB) – provides the general framework
• Guideline – Cultural Management Guidelines for the Burial of Koiwi(PDF, 530KB) – provides rules and guidelines for the burial of koiwi
• Guideline – Natural Burials(PDF, 554KB) – provides rules and guidelines for natural burials
• Guideline – Plaques and Memorials(PDF, 524KB) – provides rules and guidelines for plaques and memorials around the district
• Guideline – Cemetery Monuments and Memorabilia(PDF, 617KB) provides rules and guidelines for monuments and memorabilia in our cemeteries