Sydney burial plots in high demand as critical shortage of cemetery space looms
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Religious communities are calling on the New South Wales Government to urgently find and allocate more burial plots with the lack of space reaching a critical situation.
Vic Alhadeff from the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies said a parcel of land at Rookwood Cemetery in western Sydney being consecrated today would extend the burial space for Jewish people for another four years.
"Other cemeteries are running out of Jewish space and with the addition of the land which is being consecrated today at Rookwood it will give the Jewish community one decade more of burial space," he said.
"Up until then, there will be no more Jewish burials at other cemeteries at metropolitan Sydney as availability of land for Jewish burial is fast running out elsewhere."
He said it was a critical issue not only for the Jewish community, but for the Muslim community and a number of Christian communities as well.
"What is needed is a major multi-faith cemetery — in effect a second Rookwood. It needs to be sufficient to provide enough burial land for the next century."
A government report prepared in November 2017 found:
- Over 1.5 million persons are projected to require burial or cremation in metropolitan Sydney between 2015 and 2056, with over 355,000 grave plots projected to be required from 2015 to 2056
- By 2056, around 11,800 new grave plots would be consumed in metropolitan Sydney per annum, requiring around four hectares of cemetery burial land
- If there is no change to existing cremation and grave occupancy rates, cemetery capacity in metropolitan Sydney would be exhausted by 2051, if not before
- Unavailability of grave plots in "at-need" circumstances would particularly disadvantage: families with insufficient resources to pre-purchase, and communities with cultural and religious commitments to burial rather than cremation
A spokesman for Lands and Forestry minister, Paul Toole, said the NSW Government is working closely with cemetery operators to identify suitable land.
"Cemeteries and Crematoria NSW continues to work with Crown cemetery trusts to identify new opportunities for cemetery and crematoria development," he said.
"CCNSW is working with all Crown cemetery trusts to identify suitable land for cemetery development and to support equitable distribution of this burial space across all regions and faith communities."
But Mr Alhadeff said a number of spaces that had been looked at have not come to fruition.
"Part of the problem is that the lead time from finding a parcel of land to making it available for burial is around six years. And that long lead time compounds the urgency of the situation."
Topics: religion-and-beliefs, urban-development-and-planning, death, community-and-society, sydney-2000, nsw
