The Cemetery at Rose Cottage Horse Paddocks Submissions Close Soon

ACTEA has just become aware that a public consultation process on the proposed Southern Cemetery, (https://www.yoursay.act.gov.au/SMP) which will impact the Rose Cottage Horse Paddocks has been up on the Your Say website since 14 April and the deadline for submissions is one week away on 7 June. If you have comments after reading the Masterplan documents you can either complete the survey or email the project team at the email address provided.

Since 2010 there have been plans to construct a new cemetery on the land now occupied by the Rose Cottage Horse Paddocks. Since that time ACTEA, along with the Government Horse Paddocks Users Group, have been interacting with the relevant government agencies through meetings and making submissions, arguing strongly for the protection of a valuable paddock facility in the south of Canberra.

The cemetery went off the boil in 2011 and our focus shifted to the solar farm which ultimately alienated the paddocks along the Monaro Highway  from the agistment facility. However, these things never die and in July 2019 Transport Canberra and City services came calling again. This time around there has been a lengthy and detailed consultation with the equestrian community, including site visits.

The project team have listened to he equestrian community and their summary of agistment issues to be taken into account are set out in the Consultation and Planning part of the current discussion documents (https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/hdp.au.prod.app.act-yoursay.files/4916/1844/1160/Southern_Memorial_Park_Final_MP_Report_LR_Part_B.pdf)

If you do a word search on ‘horse’ or go to page 40 you will find a list of issues raised by ACTEA and the land managers and which will be taken into account as the project develops.

The key take home message is that

The staged development of SMP allows for horse agistment activities to be retained on site during Stage 1 (with minimal disruption) and Stage 2 (with moderate disruption) for approximately 50 years.

ACTEA believes this is a pretty good outcome in the current atmosphere of rampant development. In fact the long term plans for the cemetery will preclude any other development on the site for half a century.

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