Conservation
A Conservation Plan is prepared by an expert in heritage conservation to provide the City Council with adequate strategies, guidelines and actions that will allow appropriate conservation for future use of a site.
In 2005 the Linwood Cemetery Working Group (the forerunner to The Friends of Linwood Cemetery Charitable Trust) advocated on behalf of the cemetery for the City Council to create a Conservation Plan for the nearly 18,000 plots in Linwood Cemetery.
The Linwood Cemetery Conservation Plan was published in February 2006 (though the draft of October 2005 remains on the Council’s Heritage website page) and contains
- historical and physical descriptions of the cemetery,
- a description of the physical condition that the cemetery was in at the time,
- permitted conservation processes and approved planting.
The Linwood Cemetery Working Party was consulted during the compilation of the Linwood Cemetery Conservation Plan. 
The crux of the document is that Linwood Cemetery is recognised as an important heritage site, worth preserving, and sets down a set of strategies and recommendations for its conservation.
One of the main activities of The Friends of Linwood Cemetery is to ensure that the recommendations are followed up on and any work done is completed to the standards described in the Linwood Cemetery Conservation Plan.
A review of the Linwood Cemetery Conservation Plan is recommended in the period 2010-2015 and The Friends of Linwood Cemetery have reviewed the current Conservation Plan to evaluate progress and review the needs of the cemetery to put forward recommendations to ensure these needs are still being met.
Since the Canterbury Earthquakes (September 2010 to present time), the Christchurch City Council has had other priorities in ensuring the safety of its residents and in progressing ‘The Rebuild’. The Friends of Linwood Cemetery have felt in inappropriate to put pressure on the CCC to review the Conservation Plan for Linwood Cemetery and continue to wait for developments that allow the review to happen. Meanwhile The Friends continue to raise public awareness of the need to preserve Linwood Cemetery, research the lives of the people interred there and do their best to keep the cemetery tidy and gardened.
For further City Council information relating to Conservation Plans, please contact the Heritage Team, Strategic & Planning Group, email heritage@ccc.govt.nz, phone 941 8999.
© The Friends of Linwood Cemetery Charitable Trust
