PEOPLE with family members and loved ones laid to rest in Prestonpans Cemetery are being warned that many headstones are now unstable and work is due to take place to make them safe.

Relatives are being urged, if possible, to pay for repair works.

East Lothian Council manages 35 churchyards and cemeteries, which contain about 28,000 memorial headstones.

A spokeswoman for East Lothian Council described the headstones as an “important source of historical information” that in some cases dated back hundreds of years.

Now, some of the headstones in Prestonpans Cemetery, on Nethershot Road, are unstable and considered potentially dangerous should they fall.

Local amenity staff who help to maintain all of East Lothian’s cemeteries and graveyards are planning to make the most unstable headstones safe by lifting and repositioning them.

Warning signs have been placed on the headstones affected so any visiting relatives will be made aware and can contact the council to arrange for this work to be carried out or to find out more information.

About 1,000 headstones are made safe each year.

Surviving relatives of those with unstable headstones are invited to have them repaired to make them more stable since, legally, headstones remain the property of the families who erected them.

In many cases, family connections have ceased, are out of date or have become difficult to establish, so nobody can be contacted to make the repairs necessary.

In 2015, East Lothian Council launched a programme to stabilise headstones, when it was estimated that about 8,000 of the monuments needed action to make them safe.

To be made safe, the top sections of loose memorials are lifted using a mechanical hoist and the headstone is then buried down about one third into the ground.

Not only does this avoid damage to the stone and lessen danger to the public, it means the inscription can still be read and people can safely visit and tend to the graves.

It also makes it easier for those with burial rights to the plot of land the memorial stones sit on to fully repair the memorial.

Families who want to reset the headstone onto a plinth have to arrange this work themselves.

The work to stabilise the headstones was highlighted at a meeting of Prestonpans Community Council last Tuesday by member DJ Johnston-Smith.

Mr Johnston-Smith told the group that he had visited the cemetery recently and noticed the signs on the gravestones, adding it was important to “keep people safe”.

Ward councillor Lachlan Bruce said the council “does not have the funds to help people do this work” and that charities existed that could help families fund the work to make the gravestones safer.

He added that this type of work was “not the council’s responsibility”.

Work on a new cemetery in Prestonpans, off the B1361 and next to the Preston Square Barratt houses, is to begin next month.