Council's apology over flattened headstones in Orkney

Orkney Islands Council has been forced to apologise after flattening hundreds of gravestones in local cemeteries.

The health and safety project was criticised by bereaved families, most of whom were not notified that the work was taking place.

The local authority claimed that the stones laid down were unsafe, but has now pledged to re-erect some of them.

One relative told BBC Scotland said looking at the flattened stones "just about break your heart".

Councils in Scotland were asked to carry out inspections of graveyards after an eight-year-old boy died after a headstone toppled onto him in Glasgow in 2015.

At least 200 headstones have been flattened in Orkney since the project began.

But following criticism of the procedure, the council has now marked headstones deemed at-risk with blue flags.

The headstone of Kristen Norquoy's great-grandparents is one of those marked with a flag.

She said: "If you look around the actual kirkyard here, it would just about break your heart.

"This peg that's in here now, it would maybe have been quite nice here to have been consulted.

"I think at least a letter just so the council would state their intentions wouldn't have been too much to ask."

Some of the headstones flattened by the council are relatively new.

Ms Norquoy said: "You could literally stand here with your mobile phone and the phonebook and phone a lot of the folk.

"It's just crazy - the lack of consultation is absolutely disgusting."

Orkney Islands Council Convener Harvey Johnston told BBC Scotland that the council "set off with good intentions."

He said: "Somewhere along the line things have not happened the way we would have liked them to happen.

"I apologise profusely really for the state that our kirkyards are in and also for the hurt that that has caused those who owned the gravestones concerned."

Mr Johnston said that the council would put the cemeteries "back in the state that folk in Orkney would expect."

He said: "Some of the stones around the kirkyards are not safe, so we can't say that we're going to re-instate every single stone in the state it was in because some of them, it cannot be done.

"But we will do what we possibly can to re-instate the kirkyards into a state that folk will be proud of."