The gates at the West Taieri Cemetery will be unlocked again after the Mosgiel Taieri Community Board decided not to continue locking them after a six-month trial.
In September last year the Dunedin City Council decided to trial locking the gates to the cemetery after a submission from Mary Lawlor, of Mosgiel.
Mrs Lawlor had been involved in improving the cemetery and wanted the gates kept locked to reduce the incidence of vandalism.
In a statement, Mrs Lawlor said she had put forward the request to have the gates locked at the West Taieri Cemetery to protect the graveyard from vandalism.
The council had accepted the request and decided to lock the gates for a six-month trial, and it was up to the community board to decide if they continued to be locked, Mrs Lawlor said.
She did not want to comment further on the issue.
Mosgiel Taieri Community Board chairman Bill Feather said the board understood the viewpoint of Mrs Lawlor, who had put a large amount of time and money into improving the cemetery, but it also had to take into consideration the rest of the community.
''It is all about weighing up the degree of risk from vandalism and the access to the community,'' Mr Feather said.
Council parks manager Lisa Wheeler said the council would prefer to go back to the previous situation where the gates were closed but not locked.
Feedback from the public raised concerns about the location of the keys for the gates in Mosgiel and the lack of access for older people who could not safely use the path, Ms Wheeler said.
Although there had been some vandalism in cemeteries in the past, it was not a common occurrence.
A lot of work had been put into improving the cemetery and the locked gates were seen as a way to protect it by those who did the work, she said.
The larger cemeteries in Dunedin were locked at night to protect them, but because West Taieri was quite far out of the city, it was not feasible to have contractors locking and unlocking the gates.
