A 70-YEAR-OLD man from Blackwell received the shock of his life while visiting his parents' graves last month when he discovered someone else had been buried in the plot he had bought next to them.

Nigel Crane believes he bought the plot at The Old Cemetery on Church Lane outright after his father died in 1983, but found it had been filled when he visited the site on April 23 this year.

Mr Crane said: "I'd gone down to the cemetery to clean my parents graves after the winter and I thought crikey, there's someone in my grave plot. It was a terrific shock."

Mr Crane says he bought the plot for himself and his mother Irene, who is now buried in the plot after passing away in October 2006.

Bromsgrove District Council has since looked into the matter, and say that Mr Crane purchased a 25 year lease for the plot on April 30, 1984.

The council says it was only possible to buy burial plots indefinitely before 1960.

According to their statutory registers, the only rights of burial available in 1983 were for 25 or 75 years.

Mr Crane added: "I rang the Council and they said my lease had lapsed seven years ago. But I went down to the old council site 10 years into the ownership to ask if it needed to be renewed and they said the one off payment was all that was needed."

"The council have offered another plot further down but I don't want another plot - I want to be buried near my parents.

"They didn't even write to me to tell me my ownership was about to end and I've lived in the same house for 40 years so they know where I am. It's just unbelievable, they shouldn't be able to get away with it."

Until now, it has not been council policy to notify burial plot lease holders that their lease is coming to an end.

However, head of environmental services Guy Revans has since said: "In light of Mr Crane’s deeply unfortunate situation we’re going to start actively helping people to manage their cemetery leases. The new team want to try and support our many leaseholders to avoid inadvertently allowing the leases that they bought, often decades ago, to expire.

"Traditionally it’s been a private matter for the individual to manage but we believe that with some extra administration we can help.”