The government wants the Planning Authority to identify sites away from cemeteries where standalone crematoria may be built.
It has asked the PA to review its policy on the development of crematoria and provide suitable locations for their construction.
A public consultation process launched last month explained that “government is of the opinion that, following the enactment of the Cremation Act [in 2019], the development of standalone crematoria, including the facilities, additional facilities for the interment of ashes and other supporting infrastructure, should be afforded favourable consideration”.
The public consultation period closed on Wednesday.
The existing PA policy, published in 2015, allows for crematoria to be “accommodated within a cemetery or elsewhere”, but does not specify the specific suitable sites.
The review process will identify those locations, a government spokesperson told Times of Malta.
“The current process aims to set out specific planning policy criteria and suitable sites for the development of crematoria, which development is presently not specifically catered for by planning policy,” he said.
A law allowing cremation services to be offered in Malta passed through parliament in 2019 and almost immediately triggered a significant increase in the number of people who began to consider this new burial option for themselves or their relatives.
The law not only introduced a burial alternative, but also allows people the flexibility to decide what to do with the ashes. It specifies that each crematorium has a mortuary, a viewing room, adequate facilities for the extraction of implants from the body, a cremation room and a storage room for remains.
Up until 2019, Malta had been the only European country without a cremation law and every request for cremation had to be done in a foreign country.
However, to this day the law is not yet in force. There are no crematoria yet and cremation services in Malta are not available.
In 2018, Active Group Ltd, which operates a funeral service company, had an application for a crematorium turned down by the PA.
Last year, two years after the law was passed, the company submitted fresh plans for a cremation facility on a plot of agricultural land next to the Santa Maria Addolorata Cemetery.
While waiting for the permits to be approved, the company had claimed it had been left in the dark over the government’s plans for the sector, despite “a lot of interest from the public” and its 40-year experience in cremation services abroad.
The company’s proposed development would take place in an area known as tal-Ħorr, marked as an Outside Development Zone area. It is a 7,000-square-metre plot that the company owns, and it says the project will take up around 10 per cent of the land.
One year on, the company has still not been given the green light for the project.