Is crem up for sale?

To get all the bad puns out of the way in one fell swoop, a burning issue of grave importance was on the agenda of last night’s meeting of Boston Borough Council’s Joint Scrutiny Committee – assuming, that is, that it wasn’t cancelled at the last minute.
It concerned the possible sell off of the borough’s bereavement services – the crematorium and cemeteries in the town and at Fosdyke.
This is apparently part of the council’s “transformation programme” – which seems to mean transforming itself from an authority which takes responsibility for local services to one which lets somebody else to all the work.
If you think you’ve heard something like this before, you would be right.
A year or so ago, the council had big plans to hand the running of the Princess Royal Sports Arena and the Geoff Moulder pool to a company called Leisure Connection – which was to take on their management once local taxpayers had footed a massive bill for maintenance to make them acceptable to their new owners.
Leisure Connection had something of a mixed reputation among local authorities – many of whom discovered that once it took on the management of their facilities, public dissatisfaction soon followed.
Eventually, for reasons unspecified, the take over was shelved, and the council has since cobbled together another cunning plan for the two leisure facilities.
As always, the reason why the bereavement service may be sold off is money – not any amount that might be made from the deal, but the cost of providing new equipment to filter out mercury, which becomes a legal requirement at the end of next year.
The service is expected to show a profit of almost £140,000 in 2011-2012 – but as far as we can work out the investment needed could run into millions – which apparently the borough hasn’t got.
We can’t imagine that this costly requirement has come out of the blue, which makes us wonder why it is being addressed so late in the day.
Despite the warnings when a new crematorium was opened at Alford three years ago, Boston increased the cost of an adult cremation from £417 to £430 "to support service investment," further widening the discrepancy with Alford which charged between £360 and £390 – and the demand for cremations has fallen by 28% in the past three years.
If a deal is done to privatise the service it would be for a thirty year concession with two further ten year periods, at the discretion of the council.
For this, the operator would have to provide an efficient and sensitive bereavement service, increase customer numbers (!!) improve facilities and options for the bereaved, reduce the environmental impact of the business, boost profits and improve quality standards.
It sounds like a tall order – yet even so, a couple of operators are showing an interest.
We just hope that it doesn’t end in tears yet again – and that if it goes ahead that it doesn’t merely result in even higher charges.
What’s next for the sell off, we wonder – there aren’t that many services left, but we would imagine that the hard pressed rubbish collection could be next to go under the hammer.


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