Relief for residents as Barrowford field removed from alternative cemetery site

The field between Carr Hall Road and Lomeshaye Industrial Estate had been listed as a possible new cemetery site for Pendle.

However, last year Pendle's Climate Emergency Working Group designated this land as one of a number of sites that should be planted with trees, so that Pendle could play its part in the Lancashire wide response to the climate emergency.

These proposals for tree planting were accepted by the council's Policy and Resources Committee in September and reported to Full Council in December.

The plan now is to create a Carr woodland. On the south side of the site will be a planting scheme made up of largely wet woodland trees such as Willow and Alder. Slightly further up the slope, the trees will transition into a drier woodland.

Coun. Iqbal said "When the cemeteries issue came up at the Conservative-led Policy and Resources Committee meeting in June, and it looked as though a decision on new sites was going to be delayed indefinitely, I succeeded in getting a time limit on the decision making process.

"However, the Carr Hall Road site had already been designated for tree planting by Pendle's Climate Emergency Working Group. Labour members in Barrowford were concerned that this would not now take place and alerted residents to the problem.

"Pressure from them has led to a quick removal of the site from the cemetery list, and there's every possibility now that the tree planting can go ahead in the next planting season.

"This site was never going to be suitable for a cemetery as it's often waterlogged and I'm glad that the leader of the council has seen sense about it.

“Pendle is aiming to plant some 3,000 trees a year as part of the Lancashire Woodland Connect scheme.”

The Ribble Rivers Trust has launched a decade-long campaign to double the area of woodland across Lancashire to fight climate change, improve air quality and reduce flooding. It plans to plant more than half a million trees to reduce flooding, improve air quality and remove 100,000 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere