Falkirk Council: Staff warned bosses about 'not fit for purpose' equipment for Falkirk Crematorium

Last week, The Falkirk Herald revealed that council taxpayers are footing at £1.5 million bill for replacing the cremators after they were deemed “unreliable”. The work at Falkirk Crematorium in Camelon is expected to take six months to complete.

A £3.2 million upgrade of the crematorium was completed in January 2018 which included replacing the cremators with the ones supplied by ATI industries. But within two years the company had gone bankrupt leaving the council unable to get spare parts or anyone to maintain them.

But a former worker has said that management was warned that the choice of equipment was unsuitable. He said: “I find it very disappointing that the tax payers will be footing the bill especially when the workers that were employed at the time advised the management that these cremators were not fit for purpose and they had no one in the UK to fix them if they broke down . Surely someone should answer for this – it is a lot of money.”

It also appears that the decision to replace the cremators was never debated by councillors.

A Falkirk Council spokesperson said: “The purchase was reported via the Information Bulletin which is included in papers sent to elected members. Due to the difficult ongoing technical issues and the instability of the company involved, permission was sought to procure new cremators directly.

"Before ATI folded, they had the staff available to maintain and repair the equipment. There was no reason to suspect the ATI cremators would not be fit for purpose. The company declared bankruptcy, but no one was able to predict this.”

However, in 2020 our sister paper in Lincolnshire reported “Boston’s Crematorium equipment is unreliable and temperamental and is liable to fail without warning”.

Councillors were told of “persistently poor performance of the cremator plant itself and a deteriorating performance of the maintenance contractors ATI”. This led the council to look at introducing a temporary cremator to ensure that funerals could continue to take place.