BEREAVED families were given three weeks to remove the ornaments that they had placed within a garden of remembrance, after a diocesan Chancellor ruled that these items did not comply with churchyard regulations.

The regulations had to be complied with, the Chancellor said, despite the fact that the incumbent had not made the families aware of them.

The Consistory Court of the diocese of Leeds granted a faculty for the removal of unauthorised items placed on or near tablets over plots where cremated remains had been interred in the Garden of Remembrance at St Thomas’s, Stanningley.

The public notice seeking the faculty had elicited objections from the bereaved families. These were, first, that, when family members had made arrangements for the ashes to be interred in the garden, they had not been informed of the existence, content, or enforceability of the churchyard regulations, and should therefore not be bound by them.

Second, that had they been alerted to the restrictions in the regulations in advance, they would have made alternative provisions for the interment of the cremated remains.

Third, that the plots, together with the ornaments, had been “carefully and lovingly maintained”, and were considered to be a “beautiful tribute” to much loved family members that the younger generations of the bereaved derived considerable comfort from. The families had referred to a four-year-old girl who had laid flowers for a fondly remembered grandmother, arguing that a colourful graveyard was more welcoming for her and easier to visit.

The objectors did not wish to become formal opponents to the petition for the faculty, however. Nevertheless, the diocesan Chancellor, the Worshipful Mark Hill KC, said that he took their written objections into consideration in determining the petition, because it was in the interests of justice to do so.

He did not, he said, wish to detract from the grief and genuine sense of loss experienced by the objecting family members, nor to question the integrity or the sincerity of their actions. He fully understood how they might well derive comfort from the items, objects, and ornaments lovingly left on or near individual tablets.

Churchyard regulations, however, existed “to ensure consistent practice in the churchyard”, he said. The main issue was whether the families concerned had been given advance notice of the existence of the regulations. They said that they had not, but the petitioners for the faculty suggested otherwise.

The Chancellor said that it was impossible to resolve that matter definitively without oral testimony and cross-examination — but that the convening of a hearing would be pastorally challenging, and disproportionate to the resolving of the dispute.

Looking at all the surrounding circumstances, he said that it appeared uncontroversial that the regulations had been on the parish website from at least 2018. Their content was routinely brought to the attention of those seeking to inter cremated remains of family members within the garden. It was also possible, however, that, during the interregnum a couple of years ago, when no incumbent was in place, there might have been some neglect in that practice.

The Chancellor was ultimately satisfied that the churchyard regulations were sufficiently available even though, in one or more instances, express notification to the families had not taken place. In those circumstances, it seemed that a faculty could properly be granted to authorise the removal of items which did not comply with the churchyard regulations.

The faculty was to be issued 21 days from the ruling to allow the families the opportunity to remove the items voluntarily.

The Chancellor concluded that the main objection — that the families concerned would not have interred the cremated remains of a family member, had the regulations been expressly brought to their attention in advance — might well be a basis upon which the remains might be exhumed and reburied in another burial ground as an exception to the presumption of the permanence of Christian burial.

The Chancellor indicated that the court was likely to look favourably on such a petition for exhumation, and that the prescribed fees would be waived.