Six thousand gravestones at Rose Hill Cemetery in Oxford will be wobble-tested for safety next week, completing a five-year mission to check every memorial in the city.

City council staff are carrying out the inspections to ensure that members of the public and cemetery staff are not injured or killed by falling headstones.

The week-long inspection will start in the cemetery on Monday.

City council managers anticipate that fewer than 100 of the headstones and other memorials will be found to be unstable during the checks, which are carried out under the Health and Safety at Work Act.

Cemeteries manager Trevor Jackson said: “Our annual inspection programme started in the summer of 2007.

“It is important to carry out this work to make sure that the cemeteries are safe places to visit departed loved ones.

“We have a duty as a council to carry out this work and as the programme continues we hope to see fewer and fewer memorials needing to be laid down or supported with a wooden stake.”

The inspection starts with a visual inspection of all the gravestones, followed by a hand test to check the stability of the memorial.

Any headstone found to be unstable will be made safe, where possible, with a wooden stake.

But council bosses say larger gravestones that are wobbling may need to be laid down within the space of the grave as a last resort.

The council says gravestones remain the responsibility of the family that has paid for them.

Following the inspection, a notice will be placed on each unstable gravestone asking the family to contact the cemeteries office.

Records of the work will be kept at the Cemeteries Office at Cuttleslowe Park.

The council maintains four cemeteries and 11 churchyards.

In 2005, more than 2,000 out of a total of 13,000 gravestones in Oxford were labelled unsafe and laid flat in a one-off citywide check.

Wooden stakes were used to secure a further 279 headstones which were considered unstable.

The council spent two months testing about 13,000 headstones, amid fears that people visiting relatives’ graves could be injured or even killed by falling gravestones.

While there have been no incidents in Oxford’s burial grounds, a six-year-old boy suffered fatal injuries in a graveyard in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, in 2000. His parents received £33,000 compensation from the local council.

For more information on the Rose Hill inspections, call the cemeteries office weekdays from 10am to 4pm on 01865 252516.