Planned upgrades at Paisley’s Hawkhead Cemetery are set to go ahead in the summer – after a works contract was given the green light.
Cash has been earmarked to overhaul the roads, drainage and kerbs at the Hawkhead Road facility, which campaigners welcomed as a “big investment”.
Councillors gave their seal of approval for an agreement – worth a sum of around £230,000 excluding VAT – that will see contractor John McGeady Ltd take on the project.
Elected members paved the way for Renfrewshire Council’s head of corporate governance to award the contract at Thursday’s finance, resources and customer services policy board.
The improvements will be carried out in two sections, with the first likely to be from May 1 until June 2 and the second phase from June 5 until June 30.
Des Barr, who formed the Friends of Hawkhead Cemetery pressure group, has been lobbying the council on the issue of maintenance and repairs for the commemorative site.
He has even addressed MSPs at Holyrood about the conditions and practices at the site.
“We’ve got to give them praise where praise is due and that road and drainage being attended to is massive,” he previously said.
“It’s a big investment and it will mean so much to the cemetery users at the top of that hill, because there’s no road there to be honest.
“It’s basically a dirt track now.”
While 23 organisations expressed an interest in the project, only seven submitted a tender response by the deadline of Wednesday, February 8.
John McGeady Ltd was considered the most “economically advantageous” of those presented to the local authority, a report to the board said. The deal will be funded from the council’s capital budget.
While the group welcomes the scheduled improvements, Friends of Hawkhead Cemetery still has concerns about the maintenance and day-to-day weeding of areas within the facility.
Mr Barr said: “The biggest single issue is the paths. There’s still an awful lot of work that’s required to be done in order to bring the cemetery back up to a standard that would be acceptable.”
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