Cuts to kirkyard maintenance not about saving money, says OIC

Cuts to kirkyard maintenance are not about saving money, Orkney Islands Council (OIC) has stressed, amid claims the move could cost the authority even more.

Proposals to reduce the number of cuts burial grounds receive each year have, this week, been condemned by community councils.

They will have to bear the financial burden of any additional maintenance from funds otherwise used to benefit residents — from festive lighting to travel grants for young folk representing Orkney in sport or the arts.

Meanwhile, the contractor who spent nine years keeping Orkney’s kirkyards tidy has claimed his suggestions on how the council could save money without reducing service were ignored.

OIC says reducing maintenance at four burial grounds is to ensure “consistency and equality” with the other sites across the county — where service was reduced, last year, in a cost-cutting move.

Grass maintenance across most Orkney kirkyards was reduced from 418 cuts in 2025 to 312 in 2026, to save money on the overstretched budget.

But the council has pushed back against the suggestion that a reduction in service at a further four cemeteries would be about saving money.

The proposal to go from 12 to eight cuts in Warebeth, Firth, Stenness, and St Olaf’s cemetery came to light last week.

Questions have since been raised about why the inactive burial ground at St Magnus Cathedral is exempt from the move. It is to be the only site in Orkney which will still be cut 12 times per year.

In internal documents, OIC says this is because of the “cultural and historic significance” of St Magnus Cathedral and “the high volume of visitors it attracts throughout the year.”

For the other resting places of generations of Orcadians, the community councils have been told they can fund extra cuts themselves.

These proposals first came to light during a meeting of Stromness Community Council on Tuesday, September 29.

The group criticised the proposals, with David Harrold branding it an “astonishing” way for OIC to save money.

Firth and Stenness Community Council has told the council its members are “extremely dissatisfied” with the proposals, which they claim will not save money for the authority.

The group argues that it is inappropriate to use their budgets to subsidise “core statutory duties of the local authority.”

This sentiment has been shared by Kirkwall and St Ola Community, which has been consulted twice in 11 months about graveyard maintenance.

Chairwoman Lynne Spence told the newspaper: “We fully expect OIC to uphold its legal duty to maintain our cemeteries to a standard that respects the deceased and their grieving families without transferring that financial burden onto local volunteers and the community council.”

The man who previously held OIC’s maintenance contract, Ewan MacKenzie, has also called out the authority’s proposals.

“Reducing the cut frequency will not save any money — if anything, it will increase the cost per annum,” he writes in this week’s Postbag.

Carrying out fewer cuts will mean longer and thicker grass to contend with each time, slowing down the work, his letter claims.

The contractor’s wage and fuel bill will increase as a result, said Mr MacKenzie, who runs his own gardening business.

He told the newspaper he stopped doing work for OIC out of frustration for how the contracts were managed, and because he believed money was being wasted.

The Kirkwall-based contractor said that he made several suggestions on how money could be saved by the authority.

“Graveyards are sensitive sites to work on, with many members of the public visiting loved ones graves and so on so it needs to be tidy,” he writes.

“I said a few times that the edges don’t need strimmed every two weeks. They could be done every four weeks and it would still look tidy.

“I mentioned it a few times over nine years and nobody listened.”

He believes no one at OIC has the necessary experience in grounds maintenance, and that an expert review should be carried out to make appropriate savings.

But, in a statement to the newspaper, a spokeswoman for OIC has said cost-cutting is not behind the latest round of maintenance cuts.

“These changes have been misunderstood as savings — this is not the case,” she said.

For the 2026 summer season, the council identified savings in burial ground grass cutting to bring spend on the service back in line with the available budget.

Originally estimated to save around £27,000, OIC now says the savings are set to be in the region of £19,500 for this year.

The council said that maintenance was standardised to eight cuts per year over the summer — meaning an increased service in some areas. No complaints have been received about this, OIC says.

The spokeswoman added: “Five of the grounds were held at twelve cuts a year due to contractual arrangements — St Magnus Cathedral, St Olaf’s, Warebeth, Finstown and Stenness.

“Our proposals for summer 2027 are to bring these — other than the cathedral — down to eight cuts, creating a consistent, equal and aligned system across Orkney.

“There would be flexibility within this for local community councils to fund enhanced maintenance (i.e. additional cuts over and above the agreed eight) where there is local demand and support for doing so.

“St Magnus Cathedral will be maintained at twelve, given its status as a cultural asset and its town centre location.

“We won’t know if this will represent a significant saving until we complete the tendering process — again it is about consistency and equality, not cost.

“We do, however, across the council, continue to look at opportunities to keep our service areas in budget as costs increase but budgets do not.”

The spokeswoman said that the burial grounds maintenance budget for 2026-27 is around £104,000, but the grass cutting costs are expected to be around £105,000.