"OUT of the box thinking" will be required to find a solution to Fife's cemetery capacity problem.

Nearly a dozen in the Kingdom are currently at capacity, with more due to reach critical mass within the next 10 to 20 years.

It is expected that Dunfermline would be without burial plots by 2047, while the cemeteries at Hillend and Douglas Bank near Rosyth have just 16 and 10 years left, according to figures released at the end of 2021.

Across West Fife the only sites currently with no capacity are former churchyards maintained by the local authority which haven't received any interments in recent years.

Fife Council recently carried out a public consultation to understand the needs of residents in regards to cemeteries.

Liz Murphy, Fife Council’s bereavement services manager, said: "With the time it takes to find and develop new sites, we need to start looking now.

"It was really important for us to hear the community’s views because it affects everyone in Fife."

Fife has 61 ‘active’ cemeteries with regular burials, but ten have no additional capacity, meaning that only 51 sites have lairs available to purchase.

An additional 11 are due to reach capacity within the next 10 years and seven cemeteries have less than five years.

There is an average of around 900 burials in Fife every year, with around a third of these requiring new lairs to be allocated.

Ms Murphy said her team had been looking for "out of the box thinking" in survey responses.

Solutions could range from halting the pre-sale of lairs across Fife, creating more burial options for cremated remains, or building spaces where urns can be stored safely and respectfully.

Future cemetery provision could also take the shape of either one large cemetery for the entire region, or one site for multiple communities.

Ms Murphy added: "How it’s always been done is not necessarily how it needs to continue."

The results from the consult will inform the cemetery strategy which will be published later in the year.