New £9.5m mortuary proposed for Northamptonshire

An artist's impression of the new mortuary was released, which would cost about £9.5m to build

A county could be getting a new £9.5m hi-tech mortuary because officials say current facilities are "fragile".

West Northamptonshire Council says the number of post-mortem examinations in the county has increased in recent years.

The new building could have hi-tech equipment which would allow more examinations to take place without disturbing the bodies.

It would be located in a business park on the outskirts of Northampton.

A report to councillors, who will be discussing the plan next week, says the authority has a legal duty to provide facilities and staffing for body transport and storage as well as post-mortem examinations.

The temporary body store at The Leys in Wollaston is made out of old school pre-fab classrooms

The report explains that there is a temporary body store at Wollaston which was set up in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and has space for almost 200 bodies.

This can be used whenever hospitals run out of mortuary space and has been opened four times, accommodating as many as 417 bodies on one of those occasions.

The Leys was made out of modular buildings designed to provide additional classroom space at schools which were already 12 years old when the body store was built.

The report says The Leys has a number of drawbacks, including the absence of any facility for bereaved families to view their loved ones.

The site for the new mortuary would be council land at the Riverside Business Park in Northampton

In the event of a disaster involving unidentified corpses, there would be no way of taking tissue samples.

The proposed replacement would be built at the Riverside Business Park in Northampton and would be likely to have a CT scanner which would allow the cause of death to be established with minimal disturbance to the body.

The scanner would also mean the pathologist could examine bodies remotely.

West Northamptonshire Council says a new mortuary is needed because existing arrangements are "vulnerable and expensive"

The full cost of the project would be about £9.5m and the new mortuary would be expected to save the council about £500,000 per year.

The plan is due to be discussed by the council's cabinet on Tuesday.