The Buckingham cemetery on Brackley Road will reach its capacity in the next two years. Buckingham Town Council have announced plans to develop a new burial ground.
The new area lies on a plot covering 9,2 acres off the Tingewick road roundabout; a project with an estimated cost of £2.4 million pounds. The new grounds would include car parking, public toilets and burial plots for the next 160 years.
The town council have surveyed members of the public, asking their opinions on taking out a loan to complete the project. The survey asked whether people were in favour of a new cemetery being built and whether or not they were prepared to repay the loan.
The deadline for this consultation was the 19th of January 2023 and received 254 responses. There was strong support for the cemetery, but issues with the overall cost. The general public said they would not pay the additional £68,000 to take out a full public loan board project.
Some of the loan has already been budgeted for, but the rest would be raised through a rise of 7.2% council tax precept of the public. The repayment plan would span over the next fifty years, the final cost was calculated to be around £6 million.
In the Councils most recent meeting the next steps were decided: to push ahead with the beginning of the project and start building the cemetery and allotments using money previously put aside.
To cover the price, the council is now asking the public to consider a smaller additional cost of around £10,000, with a currently unknown amount of interest that would need to be repaid.
