A CLEAN-up campaigner at Warrington Cemetery has been wrongly berated by bereaved relatives over a safety drive involving laying gravestones flat.

Alf Clemo has been joined by dozens of helpers as part of a Millennium Volunteers project to spruce up the Manchester Road graveyard.

But cemetery users mistakenly believe that his team is responsible for moving 'unsafe' memorials and he has received anguished calls on the issue.

Alf, a Winwick parish councillor, said: "This is nothing to do with what we are trying to do here."

He is hoping to start a scheme where cemetery regulars not only tend their own graves, but keep an eye on neighbouring plots.

The safety assessment, where unstable memorial stones are laid flat, as reported twice previously in the Guardian, is being carried out by the borough council's bereavement services section.

In a bid to avoid accidents involving unsteady tombstones, officials have been carrying out health and safety checks across the borough.

Survey work has been carried out on more than 30,000 memorials at the Manchester Road cemetery and 2,000 have been deemed unsafe. Similar checks have also been carried out at Burtonwood Cemetery and eight out of the town's nine churchyards where burials still take place have also been assessed.

Work is now under way at Fox Covert and Hollinfare Cemeteries.

The Guardian has been inundated with calls and letters from readers expressing concern about discovering that their family memorials had been moved without their knowledge. Council bosses say the bereavement service has tried to contact the last-known owners of all affected graves.

A Town Hall spokesman said that a new employee was now in place who would take responsibility for that role.

It was hoped that all families will be contacted by Christmas.