Families in Faringdon may soon have to bury their dead up to 15 miles away because cemeteries in the town are full.

There are only 15-20 grave plots left and the council says it can do no more after unsuccessfully trying to find land for a new cemetery.

The town's only undertaker, AE Baker and Sons, has been lobbying the council to try to find a solution. It buries around 12 bodies each year and has warned that it is already too late to find a solution.

By this time next year the bereaved will have to go as far as Abingdon to bury and then visit their loved-ones.

Geoff Evans, funeral service manager for the undertakers said: "We don't know what will happen. We have been concerned about this for a long time and we have been having meetings with the council for the past 10 years, but nothing has happened.

"This should have been sorted out three or four years ago.''

Faringdon council's town clerk Jane Rennie said that there was simply no land to spare.

She said: "The town council doesn't want to become a burial authority. It is more of a minefield than a burial ground. Running one is not an easy thing to do. We have spent a lot of time looking for a piece of land, but there is nothing available."

AE Baker and Sons is distributing a questionnaire at the end of the month to ask the public what they want to see happen.

Mary Greetham, the treasurer of the Faringdon Free Church Cemetery Trust, wants to see a new graveyard near the centre of town.

She said: "Our town is in dire straits over this. People don't think about this kind of thing until it hits them and by then it can be too late."

"It was suggested that a new cemetery could be put in on the other end of the A420, but the dead should be buried within the community, not outside of town and certainly not as far away as Abingdon.''