Burial services
Cemeteries and burial grounds
Amenity Services is responsible for maintaining East Lothian's 37 burial grounds. We also work in partnership with the Council's Registration Team to provide a courteous and professional burial service.
If you are unfortunate enough to have to use our services, we aim to provide sympathetic and customer-focused support during your time of need.
Please note that the registration of deaths and arrangements for funerals are handled by the Area Registrars.
The Council is proud of the standards of its burial grounds and, by investing in training and equipment, aims to deliver the highest standards of maintenance and customer care at all times.
Our staff
We are currently investing in staff training and will be one of the few local authorities to have all staff involved in burials qualified to Scottish Vocational Qualifications (SVQ) standard.
Costs
The Council takes part in an annual comparison with Scotland's 31 other local authorities. This ensures that the charges you pay for lair purchase and interments are kept to a reasonable level - particularly important at a time when you will probably be incurring a lot of expense in arranging a funeral.
The future
In order to keep pace with East Lothian's increasing population and ensure we can provide for future needs, we are currently preparing our Strategy for the Provision and Management of Burial Grounds. This will set out how we can provide suitable options for burial in the county and also how we run and manage our burial grounds in the future.
How our cemeteries are run
Our Burial Grounds Regulations download provides some information on how our cemeteries are run and should tell you everything you need to know about erecting headstones and planting flowers.
This document will soon be getting reviewed; simple-to-follow guidelines on purchasing lairs, arranging funerals and erecting memorial stones will be available here in the near future.
In the meantime, local undertakers and monumental sculptors are the best point of contact to guide you through arranging a funeral or erecting a memorial headstone.