Work on a £9m crematorium and pet cemetery at Mepal near Chatteris could begin in June, East Cambridgeshire District Council has revealed.
Firms have until tomorrow (January 24) to express interest in building it and have had a month to access detailed information and consider costs.
The council, which committed to the crematorium after fire destroyed the former outdoor centre once housed there, will now identify a “preferred supplier to refine the costs and opportunities for value engineering”.
A report from Isabel Edgar, director operations at East Cambs Council, says bringing in the preferred supplier early will also reduce the amount of risk contingency.
The supplier will have “access to detailed confidential information to base their costs on”.
Ms Edgar expects a final cost to be submitted by April 4 and she anticipates a start on site on June 16.
“The new procurement timeline brings the potential ‘start on site’ date forward by around 4 weeks,” she says. “This will have an overall benefit on the project deliverability and costs.
“If the final tender costs are within budget the contractor would be able to be appointed and start on site in May 2025.”
However, Ms Edgar warns that if the final tender costs are higher than is currently budgeted for then further approval is required by full council to take the project forward.
Currently, the final tendered costs are due to be considered by council on 22 May 2025.
The contract is being awarded through a partnerships framework which most local authorities use for major tenders to simplify the process and ensure full regulatory compliance.
The plan for Mepal covers the 32-acre site of the former Mepal Outdoor Centre which was targeted repeatedly by vandals when it closed and finally destroyed in an arson attack five years ago.
East Cambridgeshire District Council describes the Mepal project as a “district bereavement centre, consisting of a crematorium and modular function room with associated natural burial and pet cemetery facilities”.
The scheme is currently in the council’s budget at £9,060,223 while they await the results of the formal tendering exercise and will be funded by CIL (Community Infrastructure Levy) contributions, money paid to the council from developers.
Ms Edgar says recent work on projections for Mepal has seen “a positive de-escalation of risks associated with the build”
Two areas previously flagged for action included a badger survey which confirmed there were none on site. And a tree survey found no issues.
“No reported red flags or issues for the geotechnical report, confirmation received that only a very limited amount of contamination in the soil identified in a small area of the site,” says the director.
She also confirmed to councillors that foundations can be a slab, rather than piling.
The latest report from Ms Edgar, to be presented to the finance & assets committee on January 30, is more optimistic than her report last September when she revealed the council was considering a range of options “to either mitigate costs or reduce the overall build cost”.
She said these options included reducing the scope of the project, phasing building works, finding additional grant funding for green infrastructure elements, value engineering (cost cutting) or “identifying additional council funding sources”.
Her latest report offers no clue as to how much, if any, the plans have altered since then.
Construction must start by late October of 2025 otherwise planning permission will expire.
