CAMPAIGNERS are celebrating a U-turn over plans to delay expanding Maldon’s cemetery.

Earlier this year, the Standard revealed Maldon District Council had withdrawn £10,000 in its budget for this year to look at expanding the London Road cemetery.

The cemetery is expected to be full by 2024 at the latest.

The funding was withdrawn after the authority received a tougher-than-expected government funding cut, leaving it having to find £740,000 in two years.

At the time, the authority said it was a “long-term” project and work continued to ascertain the suitability of the site.

But furious residents launched a petition over concerns people would have nowhere to bury their dead.

The petition with 284 signatures, started by Rosalind Oakley, of the Leech Garden Hall Farm campaign group, was put before the council’s community services committee last month.

Maldon and Burnham Standard:

Members of the public spoke at the meeting pleading for the coun- cil to reconsider.

Councillors agreed to deliberate on the petition in private before later agreeing to allow the cemetery department at the council to put in an application to expand on adjacent land.

Rosalind said: “It is a really good step in the right direction. As a result of the budget the council had put the cemetery on the back burner.

“Now we have raised the profile again and put it back on the agenda.

“It is a definite step in the right direction.”

A controversial Maldon Hall Farm planning application for 340 homes, on land surrounding the proposed expansion, was rejected earlier this year and has now gone to appeal.

Rosalind thanked everyone who signed the petition but said the appeal meant the battle was not over.

If Maldon Cemetery, which takes about 48 burials a year, cannot expand, then families will have to use Heybridge Cemetery.

However, this would then be full by 2027.