Ayrshire grave undug for funeral as council apologises for extremely distressing incident

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Council bosses have been forced to apologise after a funeral was delayed for two hours due to an undug grave.A funeral director has told how the procession turned up at Catrine Cemetery on Wednesday, November 15 to find there was "no staff nor a grave dug." Devastated mourners had to leave the cemetery before returning back at 2pm when the burial could then take place.

Wilson & Drury Funeral Service have been left enraged by the incident which was "horrendous for everyone involved."East Ayrshire Council say the incident was "extremely distressing," as they promised a thorough internal investigation into the matter.

A spokesperson for Wilson & Drury Funeral Services said on Facebook: "On Wednesday, November 22 we were due to conduct a funeral service at Catrine Cemetery.

Unfortunately, as we arrived at the graveside there was no cemetery staff in attendance nor had the grave been dug."The reason for this was due to an error on EAC's part not Wilson & Drury."We fill in paperwork and send it to the council and Bereavement Services sort it out and pass on instructions to their cemetery staff to carry out their job. "Again unfortunately, this lead to a delay on the burial taking place until later that day, we didn’t think we would feel the need to put up a post but already we are hearing people blame the funeral directors when we were not at fault."A spokesperson for the funeral directors later told Ayrshire Live: "It was just horrendous for everyone involved."We've never experienced anything like this, something has went seriously wrong."Speaking on behalf of East Ayrshire Council, Richard Grieveson, depute chief executive said: "We are aware of an extremely distressing incident involving our Bereavement Service which