A Somerset council has given assurance that no further bodies need to be exhumed from a development site where new flats are planned.

Sedgemoor District Council's development committee voted on December 7 to grant permission for Taunton-based developer Refresh Living No. 3 Ltd. to build 43 flats on a vacant brownfield site on Friarn Street, north of the busy A39 Broadway.

Officers estimated that between 33 and 90 bodies had been buried within the site, which was formerly used as a graveyard.

But the council has since clarified that all bodies have already been removed from the site and re-interred elsewhere, in accordance with advice from central government.

The Friarn Street site was formerly used as a Sion chapel, which was taken over by the Salvation Army in 1881 (20 years after its original closure) and was demolished in 1971.

Around two-thirds of the site were used as a private graveyard during the building's long and illustrious history.

A council spokesman said: "The bodies within the graveyard and burial sites were confirmed within the supporting information submitted as part of the recent application as being exhumed independently, following guidelines from the Ministry of Justice.

"During the site visits undertaken as part of the recent application, there was no evidence of headstones.

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"Graveyard clearance was carried out in 1991, but there were remains still on site prior to December 2018 when an archaeological assessment report was submitted with the previous application for a care home on the same site.

"This report confirmed the remaining graves were exhumed and all human remains (19 in total) have been subsequently re-interred at the Bedford Street Cemetery in Bridgwater."

The council added that development on any kind of graveyard or cemetery would be subject to stringent archaeological testing, and the Friarn Street site showed no sign of contamination.

The spokesman said: "Cemeteries or graveyards that are to be developed (whether public or private) would be subject to the same investigations to confirm archaeological significance and appropriate mitigation.

"The Friarn Street application was submitted with a contamination report which considered the potential risks of contamination and confirmed, following trial pitting and sampling, that there is no contamination risk from the soils on the site."

any development of the area should be handled with the greatest delicacy.

Speaking at the committee meeting, she said: "It's in a conservation area in an area built up before the age of the car. Any development needs to be handled sensitively.

"It's really disappointing that this is another scheme which fails to deliver on affordable housing. I don't think the developer's financial position should really be our concern."

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