David Ruffley MP has been investigating Edmundsbury Borough Council's work testing headstones in cemeteries and has discovered that nearly 25 percent of headstones tested in Bury St Edmunds have failed the 'push test'.

Across the whole Borough the failure rate stands at just over 16 percent, but the testing process is not yet complete.

St Edmundsbury Borough Council has a record of 19,395 headstones in Bury St Edmunds and Haverhill, but this record is not complete and Borough estimates suggest it could rise to 35,000 when all the closed church yards are accounted for.

With relatives facing bills of approximately £200 to make their family members' headstones secure the cost of repairing those St Edmundsbury has records for could exceed £600,000. If the same failure rate of 16 percent was extended to 35,000 headstones this cost could exceed £1.1million.

Another statistic unearthed by David Ruffley shows that the Borough has not yet made contact with over 43 percent of those people whose relative's headstones have failed the 'push test'. Therefore, David has today written to John Griffiths, leader of St Edmundsbury Borough Council, asking exactly what will happen to these headstones and who will pay for the repairs. This number could exceed 2400 headstones and the cost of repair could be as much as £480,000 across the whole Borough.

David said:

'This is an incredibly emotive subject and I have discovered that a quarter of all those headstones tested in Bury St Edmunds are failing the 'push test'. Across the whole Borough this figure stands at 16 percent. Potentially this could cost bereaved relatives over £600,000 and that is only for those headstones already on the St Edmundsbury database. With several thousand more headstones to be accounted for and tested who knows what this cost could rise to?

'The other figure I have uncovered shows that across the whole of St Edmundsbury the Borough Council has yet to make contact with over 43 percent of the people whose relatives' headstones have failed the 'push test'. If the failure rate of 16 percent extended to all 35,000 headstones in St Edmundsbury and the Council failed to contact nearly half these families there could be repairs costing over £480,000 required but who would foot the bill?

'With this in mind I have today written to the leader of St Edmundsbury Borough Council, John Griffiths, asking precisely what will happen to the headstones on graves where relatives can't be contacted, a number that could exceed 2400 graves, and who will pay for the cost of this work.

'This issue is incredibly sensitive and I trust that the Borough Council will treat it with the respect it so clearly deserves.'