A MOTHER is backing calls to change exhumation laws after seeing bulldozers move in on the cemetery where four of her relatives are buried.

Christine Gibbons (55) wants council-owned sites to be subject to the same development restrictions as church graveyards.

Mother-of-two Mrs Gibbons watched with families as workers began to clear the way for a shopping centre at the former Wesleyan graveyard in Cheetham Hill. About 20,000 bodies will be removed from the site, with most to be deposited in a mass grave at Bury Cemetery.

Mrs Gibbons, of Hillsborough Drive, Unsworth, has grandparents and great-grandparents buried at the Manchester City Council site.

Diggers arrived at the cemetery last week, where a shopping centre is to be built by developers North West Estates. Trees and shrubs surrounding the graves will be removed before work begins on exhumations in the next few weeks.

Relatives have been offered the choice of a communal grave at one of six cemeteries, with Bury a default site in cases where families express no preference.

Under current legislation, bodies can be moved from council cemeteries 25 years after the last burial took place, but only after 50 years at church sites. The proposed change would bring both minimums to 50 years.

Mrs Gibbons, who was joined by other relatives at the site, said: "It was not a nice thing to see the work begin because nobody wants their relatives disturbed. The proposed changes would be too late for us but obviously the law needs changing to stop this from happening to others. The one thing that could have helped would have been if they had offered single graves, but no-one was prepared to pay for that."