Residents of Wolverhampton have criticised what is being called a “fat tax” on burial plots after a city cemetery imposed a premium on wider graves.
Danescourt cemetery in Tettenhall will charge an extra 20% to families whose loved ones need a 6ft-wide plot, as opposed to a standard 5ft grave.
Wolverhampton council said the price premium was in response to an increase in obesity levels in the city, where a third of people are obese, compared with the national average of just over a quarter.
The council said it had contacted 25 funeral directors before introducing the measure, with only one of them posing an objection.
The funeral director Ross Hickton told the BBC the charge was a “fat tax” and that it was “not really acceptable or fair”.
He said: “You know people have paid into the system their entire life, paid their council tax to Wolverhampton council, and for them to be told [the grave is] 20% more because of the size of their loved one, it’s not really acceptable or fair.”
Matthew Crawley, the chief executive at the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management, said the charge seemed reasonable. “You have a finite amount of space to work with; therefore if you need to eat into a grave next door, say, then that needs to be accounted for,” he said. “You also have to account for the idea that digging the grave itself will also need extra equipment to keep it safe.”
The costs, the council said, reflected “the increased costs incurred in providing [wider graves], including disposing of the additional soil”. “Many other local councils, including Birmingham and Walsall, charge higher fees for larger graves,” it said.
Across the UK, the picture is mixed. A survey by the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors of its members found a quarter of local authorities charged extra for wider burial plots.
There was also a concern in Wolverhampton for couples who wanted to be buried together, but where one was already buried in a standard plot while the other needed to be buried in a larger grave.
At Danescourt, the council said, “while space allows, [families] will still be able to choose to place larger coffins at the end of existing rows” at no extra cost”. But otherwise, the council told a funeral director in an email seen by the BBC, the family would “have to consider burying the bariatric partner elsewhere, purchasing a second grave or exhuming the first partner to ensure they can be buried together”.
