This public health infrastructure is under review due to increasing concerns of its long-term sustainability following rising fossil fuel costs, declining land availability, and growth of new, unregulated disposal technologies such as alkaline hydrolysis. Much of the cremation and burial legislation in England and Wales have not been updated since the 1850s.
Supported by the University of Bath’s Policy Support Fund from Research England, a research project was designed with input from the Law Commission to ensure maximum relevance.
The research partnership was led by Dr Kate Woodthorpe, Co-Director of the Centre for Death and Society (CDAS) and involved Co-Investigator, Dr Diana Teggi, Department of Social and Policy Sciences (SPS), with Mat Crawley, Institute of Policy Research (IPR), and the Deputy CEO of the Institute for Cemetery and Crematorium Management.
The results from the research were shared with the Commission to inform their consultation on grave reuse legislative change, which is open until 9 January 2025.
Principal Investigator (PI), Kate Woodthorpe, says:
This was a brilliant collaborative project to be part of, conducted at speed with my SPS colleague and Early Career Researcher, Dr Diana Teggi, and IPR Professional Doctorate Student Mat Crawley. We were very pleased to be able to do the research and thankful to the participants who took part, as we felt it could be of good use to the Law Commission in their pre-consultation phase on grave reuse.
The Policy Support Fund was just the right thing to help us to do this: to identify a policy area in need of development and scope it out with external stakeholders, to then conduct a study in a short timeframe and produce a useful report, all of which we did in six months. It is great to see the project referenced in the Law Commission's consultation report launched in October 2024 – one year after we submitted our application to the Policy Support Fund.
Emma Riddle, Business Partnerships and Knowledge Exchange Manager, says:
Dr Kate Woodthorpe has a track record of delivering impactful advice and guidance at the highest level of policy and conducting and publishing policy-relevant research. This Policy Support Fund project stemmed from the need for robust academic insight into contemporary attitudes towards grave reuse. Working across the Centre for Death and Society and IPR, an empirical study was conducted in the spring of 2024. This resulted in a report submitted to the Law Commission to inform their pre-consultation phase and their consultation report launched in October 2024.
The research partnership is hosting a public meeting in person on campus in November 2024 to gather feedback on the Law Commission's consultation.