Nearly a quarter of a million pounds will have been spent by East Cambs District Council on their project to build a crematorium on the site of Mepal Outdoor Centre by the time they submit their planning application. That was the shocking news given in answer to a question from my colleague councillor Lorna Dupré at last Thursday’s full council meeting. We are still waiting for first sight of the planning application. And there is no news of the findings of the public consultation survey that was held in January this year.

It is three months since I last wrote an update on the District Council’s plans to abandon the re-opening of Mepal Outdoor Centre and to instead build a crematorium on the site. In my last update I reported that over £130,000 had been known to have been spent on the crematorium project. Last Thursday that figure was confirmed to have risen to £218,935 with another £18,025 forecast to complete the planning application, giving a total expenditure of £236,960. A further £53,000 has been approved by the council to demolish the Outdoor Centre buildings. All of this expenditure is before any work starts on the development. The council estimates it will need to spend a further £6.54 million to develop the crematorium, leading to a total cost not far short of £7 million.

Many residents were shocked to learn in July 2020 that the district council had spent the previous 18 months secretly working on the crematorium plans. There had been no prior consultation with those living in the local area or the wider East Cambridgeshire district to establish whether there was public support, instead many had assumed the council were still investigating how to reopen the Outdoor Centre, a facility so many young people had previously enjoyed.

Finally in January of this year, a public consultation was launched on the plans. Residents who were unhappy with the proposals complained that the questions and frequent preset answers in the survey made it very difficult for them to express their opposition to the crematorium plans. The consultation closed on 1 February this year, but the council has not made the results public, raising further concerns about the way the project is being run.

On Monday 22 March the council’s Operational Services Committee met and discussed the council’s new East Cambridgeshire Youth Strategy and Action Plan. This strategy found that “having things to do and places to go were identified as matters of importance to young people”, it noted that “more open space and outdoor sports and recreation provision was identified as a need”. Three days later on Thursday 25 March the council’s Finance & Assets Committee decided to apply for planning permission to demolish all of the Outdoor Centre buildings, and to push on regardless with the crematorium project.

Meanwhile nearby crematorium provision is increasing. As most people are already aware, Fenland Crematorium in March is just 12 minutes drive by car from the Mepal Outdoor Centre. Next month work will complete on a new crematorium in Huntingdon, a 22 minute drive from Mepal Outdoor Centre. That facility is due to open in June. This adds to existing facilities such as Cambridge City Crematorium, West Suffolk Crematorium in Bury St Edmunds, Cam Valley Crematorium in Saffron Walden and Peterborough Crematorium. It is difficult to imagine there could be a strong business case for another crematorium on the Mepal Outdoor Centre site.

It is time for East Cambridgeshire District Council to be open and transparent about their crematorium project. When can we expect to see the planning application, originally due by the end of 2020? When will the results of the January public consultation be published? How much more public money will be committed to the project? How risky is the business case? And what hope is there that attention will be given to developing and restoring facilities for young people in the district?