SEEKING THE 'RIGHT SOLUTION' TO A SENSITIVE SUBJECT
A CARNOUSTIE based funeral director believes he is still storing the cremated remains up to 60 people that have been left with the firm for up to 30 years.
At present, funeral directors must retain the ashes until they can be collected and now Selwood's are backing a Scottish Government proposal that would see remains dispersed or handed back to the crematorium after five years.
The firm's Lindsay Martin says that they can have up to 400 people's cremated remains on their premises in Carnoustie and Monifieth at any one time, but also have a high number that go unclaimed for long periods.
He explained: "Cremated remains fall into three categories with those that are recent and are waiting to be collected, those that we are storing but arrangements have been made to collect them and then those that we have been storing, some for over 20 years.
"And it is this third category that we are concerned about because we can't disperse them without instruction, but we sometimes lose contact with their families or they move away and we have somewhere in the region of 50 to 60 people's remains that we have held for up to 30 years.
"We treat all cremated remains with dignity and respect but it is a sensitive subject and we hope we can come up with a way of finding the right solution to this problem."
A Scottish Government consultation on death registration and burials has now been completed and Mr Martin believes most funeral directors in Scotland are backing plans which would limit the amount of time they have to store remains for.
He continued: "We feel five years would be long enough to retain them then after that we could either disperse them in a dignified manner or take them back to the crematorium for them to do the same.
"It is very much a catch 22 situation and I'm glad the Scottish Government approached funeral directors to consult on these issues."
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Weather for Carnoustie
Friday 18 May 2012
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Light rain
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