Wycombe cemetery fees are to rise to allow Sunday and bank holiday burials, councillors have agreed.
Existing hours for burials at the Penn Road and High Wycombe cemeteries are 10am to 3:30pm Monday to Saturday during British Summer Time and 9am to 2pm during the rest of the year.
But from September this year, opening hours will be extended to allow burials on Sundays and four non-religious bank holidays: spring, May, summer and New Year’s Day.
There will also be an extension of Monday to Friday burial times to include a 3pm interment between November and January.
No interments will take place on religious bank holidays, for example those of Easter Sunday and Christmas Day.
The changes were approved by members of Buckinghamshire Council’s High Wycombe town committee on August 1.
Cllr Julia Wassell told the committee meeting: “I am very pleased to see this matter coming to an end, even if it is the middle of the Olympics, which we should all be patriotically supporting.”
She added: “Thank you for a wonderful report. Let’s just vote on it and go home.”
To pay for the extensions, cemetery fees have been increased by 20 per cent across the board, which the committee considered the ‘fairest option’.
The costs of providing extended hours are £23,743 for the year, while attendance costs are £550 per interment.
The extension of hours is intended to better serve Wycombe’s Muslims, due to the Islamic custom of burying people as soon as possible after death.
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