Members of the public tend to cover Coventry Cemetery in a “shocking” state.

A cemetery in Coventry is so overwhelmed that people have taken to looking after it themselves. Members of the public were spotted with lawnmowers at London Road Cemetery this weekend.

One person who visited told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that the condition of the cemetery was “terrible” and “shocking”. They resorted to using scissors to help clear it up because they “didn’t know the extent of the condition until we got there.”

The Coventry resident also said members of the public were using lawnmowers to clear rows around the site and people they spoke to were “outraged”. People there “tended the graves with mowers and cut the grass,” they said.

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“You can’t see some of the headstones, there’s so much overgrown grass.” Photos of the cemetery taken over the weekend show gardening equipment brought there and overlapping areas that appear to have been mowed back.

Coventry Council blamed the wet weather on the cemetery’s vegetated condition which hampered maintenance work. The authority said in a statement on May 31: “Unfortunately, the recent wet weather has meant that we have not been able to complete as much spring grounds maintenance work at our six cemeteries as we would have liked in this time of year.

“We are working hard to catch up as and when the weather permits and we hope to have that first stage of work completed in the next seven to 10 days. The work will continue throughout the summer and fall and will involve pruning around the memorials, mowing and also applying weed control to reduce growth near the memorial bases.

“Our teams are working hard to ensure our cemeteries are maintained to a high standard and we apologize for the delays in some maintenance work and assure residents that it will be completed as soon as possible.”

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