General Cemetery Act 2025

2025 CHAPTER ii

An Act to make new provision for the regulation and management of the General Cemetery Company upon its registration under the Companies Act 2006; to permit the transfer of the ownership and management of Kensal Green Cemetery and West London Crematorium to a charity; and to confer powers upon the General Cemetery Company to extinguish rights of burial and disturb human remains in Kensal Green Cemetery for the purpose of increasing the space for interments; and for connected purposes.

[27th October 2025]

WHEREAS —

(1)

The General Cemetery Company (“the Company”) was incorporated by an Act of the second year of the reign of His Majesty King William the Fourth, entitled “An Act for establishing a General Cemetery for the Interment of the Dead in the Neighbourhood of the Metropolis” (“the 1832 Act”) and, under the powers of that Act, purchased lands now in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and constructed a cemetery on a portion of the said lands:

(2)

Further provisions were made with regard to the cemetery and further powers were conferred on the Company by an Act of the second year of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, entitled “An Act for enabling the General Cemetery Company to raise a further Sum of Money; and for amending the Act relating to the said Cemetery” (“the 1839 Act”):

(3)

Further powers were conferred on the Company by the General Cemetery Act 1937 (“the 1937 Act”), including power to establish and operate a crematorium in the cemetery:

(4)

The Company remains the registered proprietor of the cemetery, including the crematorium, and operates and manages the cemetery as a public burial ground:

(5)

In order to better manage the cemetery and its protected monuments, and the crematorium, it is expedient that the ownership of the cemetery and crematorium be transferred to a new charitable body, that the Company and the new body be provided with functions that are cast in modern terms and that outdated provisions of the 1832 Act, the 1839 Act and the 1937 Act (together “the old Acts”) are disapplied:

(6)

In order that better use may be made of the land in the cemetery for burials, it is expedient that the Company be authorised to extinguish certain rights of burial granted in graves in the cemetery and to disturb, or authorise the disturbance of, human remains interred in such graves and also in graves where no rights of burial exist, for the purpose of increasing the space for further interments in such graves and to use appropriately or remove altogether from the cemetery memorials on such graves:

(7)

It is expedient that the other provisions contained in this Act should be enacted:

(8)

The objects of this Act cannot be attained without the authority of Parliament:

May it therefore please your Majesty that it may be enacted, and be it enacted, by the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:―