Perceptions of occupiers' liability risk by estate managers: a case study of memorial safety in English cemeteries

This article presents a case study examining how a notion of ‘reasonable safety’ provision has come to be constructed by municipal cemetery managers in relation to gravestones and other memorial structures over the last decade in England. The article is based upon a literature review of policy and law and the results of qualitative face-to-face semi-structured interviews with a small sample of English municipal cemetery managers. The issue of memorial safety illustrates the tensions that can arise between safety and conflicting priorities, in this case sensitivity to the bereaved. The study shows that the simple promulgation of guidance will not automatically lead to it being accepted by all as "good practice". The interviews show how organisations and individual managers have sought to make sense of, and render workable, the memorial safety issue by drawing upon, and at times ignoring or adapting, available guidance.