Extraordinary Meeting of the Burial Grounds Committee
29 February 2024
Digitisation of Burial Records

1. At its meeting on 7 December 2023 the Committee considered a report upon
selecting a contractor for the digitisation of the Council’s burial records
including the scanning of old maps and registers, an electronic database and
a system for dealing with new burial requests. The Committee approved a
package offered by Pear Technology at a cost of £2995.00 plus £95.00
annually (Document 1 attached). It was specified in the quotation that the
price excluded the scanning of maps and registers, as the number of these
items was not known by the contractor at that juncture, together with courier
costs, though the cost for each as a single item was indicated. Unfortunately,
this information was not included in the recommendation.

2. The work proceeded and the invoice including the extra items totalled
£4475.00. This comprised £2995.00 plus an additional £1100.00 for the
scanning and £380.00 for the courier (2 trips). Although authority had been
given only for £2995, the remaining charges had been properly incurred as
per the quotation and the Council was contractually obliged to discharge the
invoice. The Committee is requested to formally approve the additional
expenditure retrospectively.

3. The report dealt only with Phase 1 of the project and did not make it clear that
the entire project covered two further phases, Phase 2 for the acquisition of
the burial system software and Phase 3 for the transcription into that system.
of over 3,000 entries since 1855 in the burial registers. Quotations have now
been received for both these phases from companies who work with Pear
Technology to deliver the entire package.

4. The quotation for the software is from Edge IT Systems Ltd for the Epitaph
Classic system on a five-year contract (Document 2 attached). It comprises
initial set-up costs, training and annual fees for the use of the software by two
users. The total cost is £965 of which £471 comprises annual fees.

5. The quotation for transcription is from a company called Scripti Ltd, clearly an
associated offshoot of Pear Technology as the managing director of Scripti is
also the person responsible for the Pear quotation. This work comprises back
data entry of approximately 3000 entries from burial records directly into the
Epitaph database together with validation of the entries (Document 3
attached). The cost is £4725.00.

6. The total cost of the digitisation is therefore:

Pear Technology £4475.00
Edge IT Systems £965.00
Scripti £4725.00
Total £10165.00 with annual costs of £566

7. The Committee’s budget for 2023/24 has no provision for this project but can
accommodate the total costs from underspends and income surplus to that
anticipated in the budget.

The Burial Grounds Budget is £10345.00

Expenditure to date £10647.40 (including the payment to Pear)
Less Income to date £9408.00
Actual Expenditure £1239.40

Available budget £9,105.60

Provision has been made in the Committee’s budget for 2024/25 which will
more that cover the annual fees for the various elements of the system.

8. The work completed in Phase 1 by Pear has been excellent. The software
package which we have seen both in demonstrations and by other users is
just what we need to modernise the antiquated manual system currently in
use and removes the considerable risk of loss of original data due to the
electronic back-up. For the system to be fully operative the back data needs
to be transcribed and it is preferable for that to be undertaken by an
experienced company which does this all the time.

9. It is RECOMMENDED that:

(i) The payment to Pear Technology in the sum of £4475.00 plus annual
fees of £95, as per the quotation accepted, be approved.

(ii) The quotation from Edge IT Systems Ltd for the provision of burials
software upon a five-year contract in the sum of £965.00 (Year 1) with
annual fees (Years 2-5) in the sum of £471.00, be accepted.

(iii) The quotation from Scripti Ltd for the provision of transcription services
in the sum of £4725.00 be accepted.

(iv) Contract payments be made from the Burial Grounds budget 2023/24
using underspent budget heads and income surplus to that anticipated.

Graham White
Parish Clerk
23 February 2024