MOURNERS visiting graves at St Albans' London Road cemetery are being forced to wade through mud to reach grave sites, St Albans councillors have claimed.

Councillors at the district council's policy and resources meeting last Thursday lent greater weight to the call for urgent action to tackle the problem of flooding at the cemetery.

With £75,000 already earmarked to carry out essential drainage work at the site, councillors agreed that tenders should be sorted out as quickly as possible.

Leader of the Labour group Councillor Malcolm MacMillan said: "I was there two weeks ago and was up to my ankles in mud. We should do something immediately.

"In order to get to the graveside we had to walk across graves. And when we got there we couldn't even get around the graveside. The immediate family were there but friends couldn't get close because they were stuck in the mud.

"It's unbelievable, there must be something we can do now.

"There's no quick fix but in the meantime can we use officers' resources in the next couple of months to improve the situation."

Mrs Linda Crane, who buried her 70-year-old father Mr Raymond Nayler at the cemetery last month welcomed the council's decision to make this work a priority.

She said: "My mother met with David Bean, the council's director of technical services on Tuesday. He was very apologetic and admitted that it has been an on-going problem for the past five years.

"We were absolutely appalled at what we have been through. On the day of the funeral the mourners couldn't get to the grave, they had to stand on the road. It was so awful for my mother."

In response to demands by Mrs Crane for temporary walkways to be installed at the cemetery to tackle the problem, the council has put down bark around graves and pathways to soak up excess water.

A council spokesman said: "The cemetery has had lots of problems with waterlogging, but we have agreed to put bark around the graves.

"It is very unfortunate that the weather conditions have made a situation which has been quite bad to begin with a lot more extreme.

"We are doing all we can and putting down as much bark as we can."