Southampton City Council digger churns up grass on graves

Robert Nicholls, 56, from Maybush, has strong family ties to the cemetery with his parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and many other family members being buried there.

He said he was distraught when he came for his usual visit to find out that a JCB digger, operated by council workers, had been driven straight over a number of graves.

The council workers use JCB diggers to dig graves as the days of hand digging graves has long passed.

The graves have been driver over by a JCB (Image: Submitted)Robert said: “It is totally insensitive and disrespectful to the dead that are buried here. There has been no respect shown to the dead, nor to their families.

“Many will be visiting their families up here as we start to get towards Christmas and now, they will be faced with giant tyre tracks across their loved one’s graves.

“I myself bought a wreath to lay on my parents graves and I would have been horrified if that had happened to my family on the run up to Christmas.”

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Robert laid his father Frederick to rest at the cemetery in 2012 and his mother Josephine in 2017.

The cemetery is so close to Robert’s heart he has even bought his own plot so that he can be close to his parents.

He continued: “I do appreciate that the cemetery is a tight space and that large diggers are needed but to have tracks where a digger has turned around on a grave is just horrible.

“Measures should be put in place to stop this. Before the council has used large sheets that the digger can then drive over – stopping damage to the grass and grave plots.

“This would stop any unnecessary upset to the families.”

In response to this, a spokesperson for Southampton City Council said: “Yesterday, November 28, cemetery staff carried out work to re-open a grave at Millbrook Cemetery for a burial that was taking place the same day.

"In order to carry out this work safely, staff had to drive in the burial grounds.

"This was unavoidable due to the nature of the site and the team took great care not to cause damage to the memorials or gravestones.

"After a burial, It is not always possible to finish work tidying the site on the same day, and the team have been onsite today doing further work to tidy up the area.

"Due to the wet ground conditions the team have been operating in, tyre marks may still be present at the cemetery. We apologies for any upset this has caused.”