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3 minute read
North West group meeting
A report of the meeting held on 10th December 2021 at Kimpton Clocktower Hotel Manchester
With what looked like a reduction in Covid numbers and the gradual unlocking by the government, we took the opportunity to arrange a proper old school meeting which we felt was long overdue.
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Unfortunately, as the day drew closer, a few people had to withdraw due to operational issues or where some authorities were uncomfortable with staff attending meetings. Interestingly, we could all have met up afterwards in a pub and that would have been ok, but we are all aware of the politics this pandemic keeps raising.
Having decided that as there were enough people still prepared to come we continued with the meeting. Plotbox had agreed to act as sponsors and helped arrange the venue. The hotel is based in the old Refuge Assurance building, which is a big landmark in Manchester and the scene of a fight on the tower parapet in the film, Hell is a City. It is worth a visit to look at the architecture alone!
Having gone through the usual introductions and housekeeping, Plotbox took the floor and talked us through their current position and various systems that could be used as stand-alone units to help develop the service, such as diary systems and finance/invoicing and CRM. Having taken questions, we returned to service lead agenda items.
A discussion of filming and what we allow was raised by Salford. Due to the development of Media City with the BBC and other television and film companies, we are now the focus of the location managers looking for the perfect location for their scenes. We have seen regulars such as Coronation Street play three authorities off against each other looking to extract the best deal, certain drama series seemingly taking over an entire cemetery with gazebos with little regard to anyone wanting to visit a grave. Everyone had a different tact but it was felt that none of us were getting the best deal for the service out of permitting a crew in to film and there was a feeling that, in a lot of cases, it was not worth the reputational damage.
Next up was the ongoing issue regarding items on graves with an account by Lindsay Bryant from Stockport as to how they looked to try and reclaim and reinstate a lawn cemetery. This was based around the removal of unregulated kerbs and items placed on graves after complaints by families who had bought a grave on the understanding the area would be kept lawned. Work is still ongoing in Stockport but this is an issue we all face and trying to maintain an area is difficult enough without the emotive pressures placed on us by families on both sides.
At this point Mike Gurney from Tameside took the opportunity to formally present my ICCM Fellowship and thanked me on behalf of everyone in the AGMA and ICCM group for my hard work especially sitting in on endless meetings so they didn’t have to! Mike said “We are all so very grateful to Dave for the time and effort he puts in to support us all and to keep us updated with critical information from both the ICCM and other organisations. Dave goes above and beyond and we are all proud and delighted for him that he has been awarded this much deserved fellowship”.
Talk turned to the large Muslim cemetery allegedly being planned to the north of Manchester. Whilst details are still vague, it was very well received as it would help relieve some of the pressure on authorities to allocate new burial sections when land availability is limited. This lead to conversations around the cultural differences in burial requirements and how to fulfil them without ending up providing differing methods and possibly delaying the same or next day provision.
We agreed to keep a watching brief on various things that currently affects our service, such as alternatives to flame cremation, the introduction of Medical Examiners, especially with the community deaths and the CMA, amongst many other issues.
The meeting was brought to a close with an excellent lunch and with the rooms booked for the full day, there was plenty of opportunity for everyone to catch up and do some much needed team building in person.
The date of the next meeting is still to be arranged.