Crematoria should be restricted in height and be barred from ever being converted into buildings with other uses, MPs from either side of parliament have agreed.

Members of parliament’s environment and planning committee voted in favour of amendments to guidelines for crematoria that are being drafted by the Planning Authority this week.

The changes were proposed by committee members and Nationalist Party MPs Stanley Zammit and Janice Chetcuti as part of a second round of consultation for the guidelines.

In a statement on Friday, the PN said Zammit and Chetcuti had argued that restrictions proposed for the height crematoria were too weak and needed to be further tightened to prevent abuse and unsightly large buildings.

The plan presented to MPs was to limit crematoria to a 500 square metre footprint with a height of 7.7 metres – more than the standard two storeys.

The PN argued that is too high, given that crematoria must be built on Outside Development Zone land.

“While it is good that we have agreed that crematoria can only be built on already-developed land that is not agricultural in use, this should not be used as an excuse for small ODZ buildings to be transformed into massive ones that are almost three storeys high,” the PN argued in a statement. “The technology already exists for such large crematoria to not be needed.”

The PN MPs also argued that guidelines should establish a minimum distance of 183 metres between chimneys and residents.

In a statement, the PN thanked government members of the parliamentary committee for having voted in favour of the amendments and said it hoped the Planning Authority and government would respect that consensus and amend the guidelines in line with the committee’s recommendations.

Malta has yet to have a functional crematorium, years after parliament introduced a law to legalise them, as the Planning Authority has said it requires specific guidelines before it can approve any permits for such structures.

Those draft guidelines have already gone through an initial round of consultation. They now forbid buildings used as crematoria to be reassigned to some other function in the future, as well as any crematoria from being built along Malta’s coastline.