A BICESTER councillor is appealing for a farmer or landowner to donate burial land for the town to tackle the cemetery crisis.

The cemetery, in St Edburg’s Churchyard, Church Street, will be full in about four years, according to consultants Turftrax.

Over the next few years every “nook and cranny” of the graveyard will be used for burials and residents are being urged to opt for cremation.

The move comes after Bicester Town Council employed consultants to launch a search for a cemetery in the town.

It was hoped land in developments planned across the Bicester could be set aside for a cemetery.

But the current economic downturn means work has yet to start on either Gavray Drive, in Langford Village, or farmland off Oxford Road known as the South West Option.

Town council leader Debbie Pickford said: “There are about four years left at the current site and if a new site is not found there may no longer be burials in Bicester.

“It would be nice if everyone was cremated because they would only take up a tiny space.

“We have to try to use as much space as we can in the existing cemetery and that may be between trees or areas you would not choose necessarily, and hope that gives us another couple of years.

“It’s literally, we have to use every nook and corner.

“Otherwise we will not have a cemetery and people will have to go to Oxford, Kidlington or Banbury, — whereever they will accept them and that’s the bottom line.

“If a farmer doesn’t give us the land that’s what’s going to happen.”

Miss Pickford said legally grave spaces could not be reused and technically the deceased or their family owned the plot.

At the moment about 100 people are buried in Bicester cemetery each year.

District councillor Miss Pickford said the consultants were working in the background to come up with a solution. But the town council could not afford to buy land and urged landowners to consider giving between five and ten acres to the town.

Two years ago concerns were raised that the graveyard had just 24 months left, and consultants were employed to come up with ideas to maximise space and explore all avenues.

So far the hunt for a new graveyard in Bicester has so far cost almost £40,000.

This includes digging boreholes, testing farmland and advice and support to prolong the life of the current site and search for a new one.