The Town Planning Board yesterday rejected the city's first application to convert an industrial building into a columbarium.
Yield Surplus International Group's application involved a four-storey vacant industrial building with total gross floor area of 4,348 square metres, in Yip Shing Street, Kwai Chung.
It would have held 43,500 niches but the application was rejected following 679 objections from neighbours and government departments.
To resolve a chronic shortage of supply, the government is looking at proposals such as converting industrial buildings to make more urns available.
However, there were no clear guidelines on how to assess an application to turn an industrial building into a columbarium, said board member and surveyor Raymond Chan Yuk-ming.
'The board and different departments are only using common sense to judge now. We are all waiting for a clear and easy guideline,' he said, referring to a licensing system for private urn facilities proposed by the Food and Health Bureau.