How Lisburn & Castlereagh Streamlined Their Cemetery Operations

| Read time: 5 mins

In 2022, we spoke with Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council Environmental Health Manager, Gareth Lennox, on how PlotBox had helped align their bereavement services with the Council's new Digital Strategy.

We caught up with the Administration Team again recently to learn how it has been working in practice and how their new Multi-Facility Diary has been helping them to manage their burial bookings more efficiently.

Background

Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council operates a total of nine cemeteries, a few of which are functional, and one of which, Lisburn New Cemetery Extension, has plots for sale.

As with many councils, the operational management of cemeteries can straddle roles, responsibilities and even departments. Within Lisburn & Castlereagh, Cemetery Administration management was transferred to the Environmental Health, Risk and Emergency Planning Service Unit in 2019, having originally been under the remit of Parks and Amenities.

From then, the Team has been supported with training and the implementation of PlotBox in order to build the necessary resilience required to carry out duties under the cemeteries function.

Continuity during Covid

While the Team’s previous software solution was adequate, it soon became clear that PlotBox provided greater levels of functionality.

A clear example of this was during the Covid lockdown, when PlotBox helped alleviate pressure by supporting business continuity - allowing the Team to carry on their critical functions, including burial application processing, generation of paperwork and other legal processes.

Challenges of paper-based systems

To date, the information for the majority of the Council’s cemeteries has been held in registers, with just two having electronic records held on the database of their previous software solution.

That being the case, an Administrative Assistant was utilised to update the data and add all cemetery records into PlotBox.

This is a huge undertaking, and the digitisation of these manual records is still ongoing alongside other aspects of the Team’s Environmental Health duties.

One specific challenge has been in keeping track of information relating to registered burials without corresponding numbers.

PlotBox has helped to make this easier by enabling staff to view headstones as data is inputted, and then go back and identify those burials without corresponding numbers.

Another benefit is being able to add plots onto a digital map, then tagging them with a marker; something that couldn’t be done previously without physically going out into the cemetery and taking a detailed record.

This means that now, when processing a new burial, staff can simply check it on the computer without having to go through individual records to confirm the correct grave.

Previously, family members may have been asked to come to the cemetery to identify a grave, something that may have still been difficult in the case of there being no headstone.

Now, the plot can be searched for and retrieved easily from within PlotBox.

Time Savings

The ability to save documents or letter templates onto a record is more efficient and has allowed operational procedures to become more streamlined, according to staff.

Where Grave Leases were previously handwritten, now they are in a standardised format and can be printed directly from PlotBox.

Similarly, in the case of someone having lost their Lease or requiring a Lease to be transferred, a Duplicate can easily be generated from the system.

The Funeral Director Portal

Previously, burial bookings could only be made during office hours, with the Funeral Director being required to phone or email the Cemeteries Administration Office.

If calls were out-of-hours, availability was unable to be confirmed until the morning of the next working day, when staff returned to the office.  

With the Funeral Director Portal in place, the Team has now introduced a Multi-Facility Diary, set to permit a specified number of burials per day in Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council’s three main cemeteries.

Prior to the introduction of the Multi-Facility Diary, Funeral Directors were unable to determine the number of burials due to take place at any one cemetery when making funeral arrangements with families.

With no mechanisms in place to prevent multiple bookings from happening, there was pressure on the Cemetery Team to accommodate all bookings received through the Portal, some of which with very tight time constraints.

A more streamlined booking service

Previously bookings were written onto a whiteboard, with Funeral Directors, on occasion, having to wait for staff to manually check grave numbers. This became more challenging when individuals didn’t have the relevant details available when making the funeral arrangements.

Staff in the Cemeteries Administration Office were previously only available from Monday to Friday; however, with requests for burials coming through over the weekend, bottlenecks were also common.

A Saturday morning service was put in place to help to alleviate the burden created by multiple bookings and enquiries being received over the weekend. Following the introduction of the Funeral Director Portal, provisional bookings can be made over the weekend through the system, therefore removing the requirement to have a member of staff available to take calls.

The Saturday morning service was therefore ceased, reducing administration costs.

Prior to PlotBox, the information relating to each burial was captured on a form that was eight pages long and quite repetitive in places. The detail was completed by the Funeral Director, emailed or posted to the Council with a copy of the Grave Lease, then printed off in the office.  

This, in addition to the dockets to be completed by the office staff and copies issued to stakeholders, meant that the process was very paper heavy.

Working in conjunction with PlotBox, that eight-page form was reduced to just one page.

The Team now has all the information they need in a concise standardised format, saving time and making their burial processes more streamlined.

The Multi-Facility Diary

With the cemetery function working across two separate units (the Administration and Records Management under the remit of the Environmental Health, Risk and Emergency Planning Unit and the Cemeteries grounds work under the remit of the Parks and Amenities Unit), it was difficult to get staff in place and retain resources on the ground. 

This is because grounds staff carry out other grounds maintenance duties across the Council area, such as grass cutting or flower planting in addition to grave digging and burials.

The resource available necessitates a limit on the number of burials that can be facilitated each day. This can now be managed more effectively using the Multi-Facility Diary.

Previously, staff would have to manually block around any slots booked out-of-hours to mitigate the risk of further burial bookings being received either immediately before, or straight after the booking.

This was heavily reliant on staff checking the system in their own time over the weekend.

Now, with the introduction of the Multi-Facility Diary, that can be done preemptively, minimising the risk of human error. There is no requirement therefore to check the burial bookings over the weekend.

Resource management

The Multi-Facility Diary has also allowed time for gravediggers to prepare between burials.

Where previously there may have been three burials in succession, or two in two different cemeteries at the same time, staff can now ensure that only one cemetery can be booked at a time through the Multi-Facility Diary.

This is an effective tool for managing resources and means that there are no families queuing at the cemetery gates, while another burial is taking place.  

Now there is no need to rush families and Funeral Directors off site, while grounds staff have the time they need to prepare grave sites and arrange any specialist equipment needed.

The Team therefore have greater overall control of the entire process resulting in smoother operations.

Funeral Directors are now also able to put any relevant additional notes onto a burial record at the time of application.

Providing all of the information needed by grounds teams to make the suitable arrangements, such as the type of coffin, or an individual's weight, results in a more efficient service being provided.  

All of that information is there in perpetuity, meaning that if a family member was to query how a burial was carried out, the associated information is attached to the record and is discoverable, therefore providing an audit trail.

Overall Experience

Ultimately, the introduction of PlotBox has allowed the Environmental Health, Risk and Emergency Planning Service Unit team at Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council to take the Cemetery Administration function that transferred to them back in 2019 and make it more efficient, more streamlined, and more user friendly for their staff and the Funeral Directors utilising their services.


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