Is my investment in cemetery plots dead in the water?
T.S. writes: Have you any update on Farnham Park Cemetery? I have heard nothing from them, and the company responsible, Regent Memorial Limited, does not respond to phone calls or emails. Have we lost our investment? I visited the site in Farnham recently and it is basically an empty field.
WHEN I looked into this and wrote about it four years ago, all the warning signs were there. Salesmen were marketing cemetery plots as investments for around £1,850 apiece, with predictions that within two or three years their value would have rocketed by as much as 40 per cent because of a national shortage of burial land.
In fact, Regent Memorial’s website still includes a misleading picture showing headstones that belong to an adjacent genuine church cemetery.
One of Regent Memorial’s directors, Kamran Saleem, confidently told me in 2017 of his experience in the industry, explaining that his father, Mohammad Saleem Akhtar, was chairman of the Birmingham mosque that runs the biggest Muslim funeral service in the city – and possibly the whole country.
What has changed since? Well, despite the sign directing traffic from the main road in Farnham, not a single burial has taken place at the cemetery. It is a ghost town, untended and overgrown, and the shipping container that was used as an onsite sales office stands rusting. Meanwhile, Kamran Saleem runs Motorserv-UK, a used car dealership and service centre in Solihull.
In 2017, I reported my suspicion that Saleem’s real intention might be to build houses on at least part of the land. Sure enough, a slice of land was transferred to a Channel Islands company called Rheno Property Holdings. However, the local authority rejected a planning application for housing, submitted by a connected company, Plot (Farnham) LLP. And this has not been the only land deal in the area. Last year, l and previously regarded by the council as part of the projected cemetery changed hands for more than £2 million.
The new owner, confusingly called Farnham Cemetery Limited, is controlled by the Ismaili Trust, an Islamic charity based in London. It told me it is not connected to Regent Memorial, adding: ‘Planning already exists on our site for burial and we are looking to pursue that.’
Your own agreement with Regent Memorial obliges that company to continue marketing plots and to keep the cemetery clean and tidy. Yet no marketing is being done and the site looks abandoned. Lots of investors have contacted me, complaining they feel cheated. It certainly appears that Regent Memorial is in breach of contract. Its bosses do not even acknowledge burial applications that I understand some investors have made.
Saleem is not the only owner or director of Regent Memorial Limited. Behind him stands Henry Anderson, a Channel Islands businessman. Both were repeatedly invited to comment. Neither did so. I suggest you and other plot owners get together and sue Regent Memorial. Saleem and Anderson were happy to take your money. Let’s see how they respond when a court hears how they benefited from false sales pitches and then left you in the lurch.