NAMM has negotiated an alternative to 30-year guarantees on headstones increasingly being required by burial authorities.

NAMM (National Associ-ation of Memorial Masons) consulted a barrister last year about the legality of 30-year guarantess that burial authorities have been demanding from memorial masons in order to allow them to work in their cemeteries.

NAMM was advised that it could successfully oppose the 30-year requirement and members agreed at their AGM in September last year that NAMM should publish a \'stance letter\' opposing it (see NSS October 2006).

Some members at the AGM had wanted to pursue legal action against authorities that were demanding the extended guarantees, especially as members reported that there were some authorities now demanding 50-year guarantees.

But NAMM has now negotiated an alternative arrangement with the Institute of Cemetery & Crematorium Management (ICCM) that removes any kind of term-based guarantee and replaces it with a guarantee of conformity.

This new guarantee, which has yet to be finalised but seems to satisfy NAMM and ICCM, requires memorial masons to guarantee to fix the headstones in accordance with current best practice stated in the NAMM Code of Working Practice and BS8415. And it requires the burial authority to guarantee to provide stable ground with backfilling to ICCM recommended standards, with any authority-provided foundations manufactured to appropriate British Standards.