Splitting up Weymouth's burial services at the time of next year's change in local government has been criticised by borough councillors.

Cllr Ian Bruce said the new Dorset Council wants to take on the profitable town crematorium and leave the cemeteries, which cost money to maintain, to the Weymouth Town Council when it is formed next April.

He says the move would split up staff which have worked as one service for many years and end the cross subsidy, where the excess income of the crematorium helps support the cemeteries.

Mr Bruce said that, until recently, the Dorset Council shadow executive had been happy to transfer both to the new town council but had now decided that only the cemeteries should move over to local control, arguing that the crematorium served a wide area that just Weymouth.

“I am quite happy for both to go off, but they can't just chop the service in half...the whole subject of burial is much more complicated than many of us realise...

“I am just asking that we look very carefully at it. Either the Dorset Council has the lot, or the Weymouth Town Council,” he told Monday's borough council management committee.

Cllr Kate Wheller said she was also against splitting the service in two: “The finances are quite significant but we are also very proud of how the crematorium staff work very much as a single entity with burial services. Splitting them up could cause a real hiccough and we must ensure this doesn't happen...I would prefer the crematorium stays in the ownership of the town... we are good at this, let's not lose it.”

Cllr Colin Huckle, who chairs the shadow town council, said he also supported keeping both parts of the service together but he warned that while the crematorium did make a surplus it had to be taken into account that every ten years or so it needed what he described as “huge expenditure” to buy new equipment.

A further report is expected to be presented on the future of both services in the New Year.

It may include a look at an issue raised by Cllr Bruce at previous meeting into the policy of burial grounds in the borough continuing to be non-denominational. He said there had been a call for a specific Jewish cemetery and another area for Muslim burials.

Cllr Bruce suggested, at the time, that some of the investigatory work could be completed by the borough council in the remaining months it had; the findings being presented to the council which ended up running the service.