IN the Hereford Times on March 28 you ran an article headlined “Clamps to come off some headstones”.

So Herefordshire Council is to carry out ‘new assessments’ at Hereford cemetery.

When this originally happened I arrived at my parents’ grave and was incensed (as was the family) to see this monstrous stainless steel scaffolding attached to our parents’ headstone. The stone was stable and well looked after.

I made my anger known to the council’s relevant department and asked how many people had been injured or killed in Hereford cemetery in the past.

Oddly, no figures were forthcoming.

The site of mum and dad’s stone with the hideous scaffolding led us to club together to buy a new headstone at considerable cost.

Now the council is to “pressure test against new guidelines”, we are livid. Would this be because the cemetery now looks like a scrapyard?

Many people cannot afford to replace or repair headstones, they are expensive enough the first time around.

If this was a chance to extract money from people on the back of the insidious health and safety zealots it seems to have backfired.

We note that in the older part of the cemetery where monuments are often up to six feet high there is no sign of the scaffolding nonsense. Why?

Because no family members are alive to pay for repairs or new headstones? Yet these monuments could well kill anyone if they toppled. Need I say more?

This was a money grabbing exercise of the worst kind which has caused a great deal of upset to a lot of families concerned.

MRS V MORGAN, Cleeve Orchard, Roman Road, Hereford.