According to INSEE figures, France saw over 587,000 deaths in 2016. This mortality rate has seen cremation's share of the total increase steadily for over 30 years. In the near future, if this is not already the case, town halls will be faced with a shortage of available spaces in their cemeteries. This saturation of facilities poses a number of problems, not least with regard to the obligation of local authorities to offer their constituents a place to pay their respects.
Complex management for local authorities
Today, town halls are faced with a major challenge: the availability of physical space in their cemeteries. Spaces are increasingly saturatedeIf they can be extended, they are very costly for the municipality. Lack of time, or lack of control over the cemetery layout plan, can lead to town councils being overwhelmed in the management of burial spaces, and finding themselves faced with the dissatisfaction of their constituents.
To deal with this situation, some communes have decided, under certain conditions, to renovate abandoned concessions and/or take over some of them in order to guarantee the space required to accommodate new deceased. This is a complex and costly solution, but it does not provide a permanent solution to the problem.
Town halls: use software to manage cemetery saturation
To avoid saturating cemeteries, the only sustainable solution is toanticipate the need to accommodate the deceased. Each town council must therefore estimate the number of deaths it will have to deal with in the coming years, and anticipate the choices families will make. For example, with more and more people choosing cremation (35% in 2017 and, according to statistics, 50% by 2020) as an alternative to burial, town halls need toinvest in cinerary equipment to avoid saturation of their columbariumsand, more generally, their cinerary facilities.
In order to anticipate the saturation of their cemetery spaces, municipalities can rely on complex estimates, or else entrust the management of their cemetery to dedicated software. dedicated software. These tools, designed for local authorities, reference the facilities available in cemeteries, as well as demographic data, to precisely estimate the facilities their cemetery needs.
Would you like to find out more about these solutions? Our experts can give you a free demonstration of one of them, and show you just how useful cemetery management software can be.
