Families in Birmingham have started a petition urging the local authority to improve maintenance at a cemetery in Oxhill Road and has already accumulated 10,000 signatures. Families used their bare hands and tools to clear mud, unblock drains and build trenches at Handsworth Cemetery after graves sunk in the wet. Now they have questioned where more than £50,000 has been spent on repairing a cemetery after repeated incidents of flooding. Birmingham City Council has apologised to the families for the upset caused.
Mohammed Ishtiaq’s mother is buried there which has recorded more than four floods in six months, but repair work had only been carried out in one section of the cemetery and new turf laid by the section where his mother was.
In a statement to the BBC, he said, "So the money that they say they've spent - the £50,000 - I still can't believe that they've actually paid out £50,000 for that sort of work."
