About 200 people packed Springwood Sports Club last Wednesday, June 23 for the meeting, where speakers addressed the crowd on the anti-crematorium campaign to date followed by a question and answer session.

Opponents had been told the issue was due to come before BMCC in August, emcee Sue Butler said.

“[Our] latest information is that it will not get to council until August,” she told the meeting.

One of the founding members of the campaign, Beverley Moreman, gave a run-down on the main issues opponents were concerned about in relation to the development, while Helen Ptolemy from the NSW Centre for Population Health, which presented a submission to BMCC on the proposal, outlined information contained within the report.

Local resident Barbara van Kessel presented the findings of crematoria survey she had completed to gain more information on similar developments.

“I have been comparing proposal for the life celebration centre ... with other crematoria developments in Australia and New Zealand,” she told the meeting.

“Most were willing and quite happy to provide me with the information I was after.”

One aspect of the survey focused on how many houses and food outlets were within the 200 metre buffer zone of crematoria recommended in guidelines set out by the Australasian Cemeteries and Crematoria Association (ACCA).

The survey found “most of the time there were no homes” within the 200 metre boundary of the premises, that homes located within the buffer zone were generally owned or occupied by owners of the facilities, and no food premises were situated within the boundary, she said.

However, there were 60 homes and three food premises within 200 metres of the proposed Faulconbridge development, with one property within 40 metres, Ms van Kessel said.

“I do not think this site is at all typical of what is out there,” she told the meeting.

“The sum total of all of that [the survey findings] is that it’s going to have a negative effect on our community.”

Consultant town planner Gilbert Blandin De Chalain also spoke to the meeting from a planning perspective, stating he was “humbled” by the research that had been undertaken and that he did not believe the application met the zone objectives of the Local Environment Plan (LEP) for the area.

Deputy Mayor Janet Mays and ward councillors Daniel Myles and Brendan Luchetti were present at the meeting, however did not speak due to legislative constraints.