Decision on 8,500-plot cemetery delayed

An artist's impression of a cemetery proposed on farmland in Sutton, near Peterborough

A decision on whether to allow an 8,500-space cemetery to be built near a city has been delayed to allow people to comment on the plans.

Peterborough City Council's planning committee agreed to defer a decision on the cemetery, proposed on farmland off Old Peterborough Road in Sutton, at a meeting on Tuesday, to allow a two-week consultation to be carried out.

The cemetery would be mainly used for Muslim burials, but there would be spaces for people from other faiths and those who did not have one.

Council officers had recommended the application be refused, but said the authority had been presented with new information about how many people were typically buried each year, which challenged its suggestion that the need for the cemetery had been overstated.

However, officers said other reasons for refusal remained, including its potential "visual impact" on the land, which is informally designated as "John Clare landscape" in reference to the 19th Century romantic poet's descriptions of the countryside in the area.

The plans included a ceremony building, a maintenance building and a 64-space car park, as well as 8,488 plots which would predominantly be for Muslim burials.

Council officers initially said the cemetery would be of "excessive size" and was not in line with the authority's own planning rules.

But Phil Moore, development management team leader, said updated information on burial rates challenged this justification for refusal and that the council had received a last-minute request that consultation be undertaken again.

"The reason we're doing this is because we want to make sure that any decision made by the council on this application is robust and not open to potential legal challenge," he said at the meeting.

The proposal, put forward by the Green Meadows charity, has previously received 407 comments of support from the public and 193 comments opposing it.

A group of 21 imams issued a statement in support of the plans, which said that having a site predominantly for Muslim burials would help "preserve cultural identity and strengthen sense of community".

Peterborough Civic Society was among the bodies which objected to the proposals, writing that "no convincing justification for such a large-scale cemetery in open countryside on high-grade farmland".

It also suggested the council had been presented with outdated information on burial rates, writing that "the stated average of 26 burials/year underestimates the current trend (over 30/year)".

The planning committee will next consider the application at a meeting on 11 November.