THE cost of dying is set to go up again in Southampton with a 20 per cent hike in burial fees.

It comes just months after the Tory council controversially put up cremation fees by 33 per cent, or £150, to £600.

Cemeteries boss Councillor Matt Dean, pictured, will today decide whether to ask for more money to bury a coffin or ashes and for the purchase of a grave space.

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The council claims it needs the extra cash to help meet spiralling costs of its five cemeteries.

The burial of cremated remains will shoot up £20 to £120.

Burial costs will rise from £336 to £403 for a single grave, while the cost of a four-person grave will rise from £544 to £642.

Many relatives also buy 30-year exclusive rights to secure graves from being dug up for use by other families.

Those rights will go up from £530 to £636 pushing the total cost of a typical burial to £1,039.

And the fees are doubled if the deceased is not a Southampton resident.

Gary Trevitt, chairman of the National Association of Funeral Directors’ Southampton branch, said: “We’ve already had to pass on an extra £200 in cremation charges and this extra 20 per cent will take the cost of burial over £1,000.

“What this council has done is to penalise the general public who in this economic climate have got to find an extra £200 to cremate or bury a loved one.”

Fees for cremations rose from £450 to £600 in January.

Cllr Dean insisted that the rise was justified because between £3m and £6m was needed to pay for four to six new cremators and mercury abatement facilities to reduce the amount of pollution the crematorium emits. But opposition councillors said the rise could have been phased in.

■ Elsewhere Tory council leaders will approve other rises in charges for pest control and port health services of about three per cent.

New charges for the extermination of bed bugs will see the council ask from £125 to £625 to deal with infestations of the nocturnal insects, depending on the house size.

And a non-refundable £25 booking fee will be brought in for marriage, civil partnership and citizenship ceremonies to raise an extra £25,000.

The charges would go up from April 1.