Council takes three months to respond to the Ayr Cemetery Freedom of Information request

The Ayrshire Post asked council chiefs to supply answers in March and only received a reply this week.

A Freedom of Information request has been sitting with council chiefs since March.

Council chiefs took three months to respond to a Freedom of Information request over the Ayr Cemetery scandal.

The Ayrshire Post launched a plea for answers after reporting on months of agony from grieving families over the water ingress saga.

Cemetery bosses shunned our request on March 8th as they dealt with the crisis-hit graveyard extension.

Freedom of Information requests must be replied to within twenty working days.

But council chiefs took until June 8th to reply - an astonishing sixty-three working days later.

This week we were finally issued a response after threatening to lift the lid on delays within the under-fire council departments.

When we asked how many graves had been inspected after families were left, fearing loved ones were floating in 6ft of water.

In response, council chiefs have told how only thirteen graves were checked as part of investigations at the Holston Road burial grounds, leaving 115 unchecked.

But council chiefs have remained tight-lipped on the cost of concrete lairs at Ayr Cemetery after they revealed they were first mooted in 2015 after raising environmental concerns.

They have confirmed only one report of water ingress has been made, which came on September 22nd, 2021 - and sparked the primary probe.

A Freedom of Information request is meant to be responded to within the statutory period, with South Ayrshire Council saying on their website that they will supply a reason for any delays.

However, despite pursuing the local authority’s Freedom of Information department several times, we were met with a wall of silence.

Last month we were told by the Freedom of Information department that “due to the current urgent situation at the cemeteries, officer time within the service is being prioritised to operational matters, and we have experienced delays from the service providing information.”

It is understood that devastated families have also lodged a request for answers under a Freedom of Information request and are still yet to receive a response.

By the time responses arrived, we had found that some information asked was out of date and already in the public domain.

An apology from Freedom of Information chiefs reads: “I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to you for not meeting the statutory deadline to respond.

“I appreciate that this delay and lack of correspondence updating you on what was happening must have been very frustrating; again, I’m sorry this has happened.”