DISGUSTED residents say a cemetery has been left in an appalling state that shows "a total lack of respect for the dead".

Residents claim that grass cuttings have been left strewn across gravestones in the cemetery in Shepherds Lane, Beaconsfield.

Robert Done, 59, of Hyde Green, Beaconsfield, said the cemetery is in the worst state he has ever seen it.

He said: "They just cut the grass and leave it all over the graves. There are a lot of people who are extremely angry about this. It's an absolute mess."

Irene Cooper, of Ronald Road, Beaconsfield, said the untidy state of the cemetery showed "a total lack of respect to the dead."

She added: "It's totally and absolutely disgusting. They cut the grass but it was just left there. The district council said they would get somebody to go back and make it look better but they didn't.

"People go up there to visit peoples' last resting place but it is just disgusting."

Sheila Perfect, 65, of Hyde Green, Beaconsfield, said she visits the cemetery to tend to her husband's grave, and described the state of the cemetery as "disgusting."

She said she had been forced to trim back hedges and trees herself something she thinks South Bucks District Council, which is responsible for the cemetery, should do.

A spokesman for the district council said: "We have had a couple of complaints about grass cuttings and have arranged for our contractors to remove them.

"The cemetery is regularly cut and the hedges were cut and pruned last week and a general sweep of the area was done. We want to keep the cemetery in such a state that people will want to visit it."