“We share a boundary and we happen to share a graveyard," said frustrated St Albans man Steve Kavanagh at the April 10 Hawkesbury Council meeting.
“Five of them are on my next door neighbour’s property, the legs of three ladies are on his and the rest of the gravestones and monuments are on the church’s property.”
Council deferred a decision on whether to rescind a previously approved conservation management plan (CMP) for the St Joseph’s Church Guesthouse at Lower Macdonald after complaints from a neighbour, who believes the CMP makes him liable for maintaining Mr Kavanagh’s part of the cemetery.
The marked boundary of the St Joseph’s Catholic Church Cemetery lies both within Mr Kavanagh’s property and that of his neighbour.
Mr Kavanagh and the restored church have been before Council on a number of occasions in recent times.
After restoring the church he was running weddings there, but neighbours complained about the noise. The weddings were stopped because of this and the fact he did not have a development application (DA) with Council to run a business on the property.
He has since submitted a DA to use the church as a place to run weddings. As part of that, he was required to prepare a CMP, for how he intended to manage the historic church and site.
Council accepted his CMP in 2017, but now, after complaints from a neighbour, they are considering rescinding it and asking him to do it again.
The neighbour believes it is unclear about whom is responsible for managing the cemetery. The CMP, for the most part, about the church, but there are many references to the cemetery because it lies on the site.
Council’s general manager Peter Conroy told the meeting on April 10 that the CMP was now a problem because someone had complained about it, despite it being unanimously supported by Council previously.
“It is important because the issue has been raised,” he said.
“The CMP is required in this instance to support the DA, that is not under consideration tonight, you can't have that DA without that CMP.
“For clarity and for legal tidiness, it would be better if the CMP just related to the property that the church falls within.”
The matter has been deferred until the next Council meeting, to be held in May.
