South Derbyshire District Council is spending thousands of pounds to make sure disrepaired grave and cemetery memorials do not topple over and injure or kill people.

Sites in Church Gresley, Newhall and Woodville are among the first in the Swadlincote area to be assessed.

The District Council has agreed to spend up to £30,000 over the next five years assessing unrepaired memorials in the six cemetery and five closed churchyard sites under its management.

It says that six people have been killed in England in recent years after cemetery memorials fell on them.

The authority also says there have been "countless" accidents ranging from bruising to severe crush injuries and broken bones.

It says these incidents are caused by neglect to maintain the memorials, which are the property of the person or people who own the particular grave, but the council remains culpable as the manager of the overall cemetery sites themselves.

The council says: "Since Victorian times memorials have been erected on graves as a permanent reminder of those buried within.

"It is often wrongly assumed that memorials are permanent structures, installed to the highest standards and will last forever without any need for repair.

"Unfortunately, this assumption has cost the lives of six people nationally in recent years, most of whom have been children and there have been countless accidents ranging from bruising to severe crush injuries and bone breakages.

"Local authorities have to tackle years of neglect and in some cases poor workmanship.

"Yet the memorials do not belong to the council – they remain the property of the person/s that has been granted the exclusive rights of burial."

Memorials could be cordoned off or be laid flat on the ground if they are in disrepair or in danger of falling over.

The authority expects the process of carrying out safety testing, ahead of any subsequent repairs, over the next five years, will cost between £25,000 and £30,000.

Repairs will be the responsibility of the owner of each plot and the repairs must be carried out to agreed standards.

If the owner cannot be traced the council will consider repairing them itself if funds are available.

The council says assessments must be carried out to "ensure a safe environment for visitors and staff at our cemeteries" and to "reduce risk for officers, memorial masons, families of the bereaved and visitors to the cemeteries".

In the first year of safety testing, part of the Church Gresley cemetery will be assessed, with the rest of the site assed in the second year of testing.

Work at Newhall cemetery and St Stephen's Churchyard in Woodville will start in year three.

Year four will see work to cemeteries in Marston-on-Dove; Etwall; Findern; and Moor Lane in Aston-on-Trent

The final year of the five-year programme will see work to the churchyards at All Saint's in Findern; All Saint's in Aston-on-Trent; St Michael's in Willington; and St Wilfrid's in Barrow-on-Trent.

A report on the safety testing says: "The safety assessment is to test whether memorials can withstand a reasonable hand force.

"This force has been arrived at scientifically and replicates the force of a person falling, pushing or pulling against a memorial."

The assessments will look out for cracks in headstones, waterlogged ground around the memorial, missing chunks of the memorials or lopsided structures.

These can be caused by poor workmanship, tree roots, vandalism, subsidence, weed killer chemicals, weather or storm damage, animal or insect activity and accidents, the report says.

Any memorial found to be unsafe whether staked or not will have a warning notice attached explaining the situation.