As some local residents are gearing up for the next round of their fight with a development company that wants to build a crematorium in the north end of town, they received a piece of encouraging news from an agency involved in regulation of the funeral industry in Massachusetts.

Ryan LePage, one of the organizers of the opposition group known as Tiverton Residents Against Crematorium, said the Massachusetts Board of Embalming and Funeral Directing will move forward in considering a complaint filed against the crematorium’s developer, Sakonnet Partners LLC.

The company, whose principal is Jonathon Ferreira, a Fall River funeral director, may be in violation of a Massachusetts law prohibiting funeral homes from operating their own crematories, even across state lines, according to LePage.

When the topic came up at a planning board meeting in March, the developer’s attorney, Jay Lynch, essentially dismissed it as a non-issue.

“My client has checked with the appropriate agencies in Massachusetts [and confirmed] that his use and ownership of this site is going to be permissible.”

However, LePage said he was notified that the Massachusetts regulatory board considered the matter in closed session last month and voted unanimously to forward the complaint to the agency’s Department of Prosecutions. While the outcome of that action is still uncertain, LePage called it a “huge development.”

“This has always been the ace up our sleeve in case things didn’t go right with the planning or zoning boards,” he said.

Appeals hearing rescheduled for August 2

Sakonnet Partners LLC is appealing the planning board’s recent denial of its application to build the crematorium. Several reasons were cited by the company’s legal counsel as justification for the appeal, including that certain findings of the planning board were beyond its jurisdiction.

The Zoning Board of Appeals hearing, originally advertised for July 5, has been postponed at the request of the applicant, according to town officials. It is now scheduled for 7 p.m., Wednesday, August 2. The location is not yet confirmed.