WITH reference to the saga of the controversial topple testing, how pleased I was to read in the Lancashire Telegraph that Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council is set to agree to pay for future health and safety checks on headstones and the comment from the council’s executive member for regeneration Coun Alan Cottam.

He said, and I quote: “If we test a stone and it comes loose we will repair it and if a gravestone has been strapped up or laid down the council will set it straight.”

All this pleased me no end, until I read further and again I quote “but would not pay retrospectively where relatives have already footed the bill.”

This is absolutely disgusting. A relative of mine, in his 70s, was heartbroken on discovering a family gravestone staked and banded. There was nothing whatsoever wrong with this headstone prior to testing.

I don’t think the council fully appreciates the distress the testing has caused. To visit a loved ones final resting place and see the desecration caused by a stake being driven into the ground and horrible bands fastened round the headstone, but the final humiliation is to find a note attached stating if the headstone is not repaired within a certain length of time it will be removed and laid on the ground.

It is nothing short of bully boy tactics. What is a person expected to do in these circumstances. My relative paid out of his meagre savings to have the headstone repaired. Money he could ill afford.

He happened to be visiting the cemetery when the so called topple testing first began and he watched the contractors who were using a tester held together by tape, one has to ask was the tester faulty, especially following an article in the Lancashire Telegraph in June which revealed findings of an official report that said 15per cent of stones checked in Pleasington Cemetery had been incorrectly assessed, our family grave being one of them.

Peter Hunt, strategic director for regeneration and the environment, now says “We are reviewing our policy”. It’s a bit late for that now.

Mrs L.M.Jackson, Haslingden Road, Blackburn.