eNGOs Oppose Extension of Development Permits

eNGOs … join in roundly condemning Legal Notice 109/2020, announcing the extension of developement permits valid until 2022 for a further three years.

  This unprecedented move by the Planning Authority illustrates yet again that same authority has lost track of its mission statement to

“secure a balanced and sustainable environment for our community and provide a better quality of life through a sustainable land use planning system”.

The Legal Notice comes into effect when Malta is focused primarily on coping with the COVID-19 virus within the islands, a time when this legal notice is bound to go unnoticed amid concerns for the health and safety of the whole nation.

The Legal Notice was not preceded by a legally-required public consultation. Indeed the present slowdown totally debuks and discredits the PA’s claims of urgency to justify its lack of public consultation. The Planning Authority’s invitation for the public to participate at hearings electronically is discriminatory and excludes persons without access to electronic means of communication. It makes a mockery of the Planning Authority’s obligation to have meetings which are open to the public, disregards concept of “force majeure” and compounds the unjust situation where the implementation of a permit is not suspended until the final appeal decision. Planning permits will be issued practically by email whilst the appeal process before the EPRT and the Court of Appeal is completely at a standstill.

The Legal Notice makes a mockery of the Aarhus Convention, which does not include a clause allowing the PA Chairperson absolute discretion to act in a discriminatory manner regarding planning applications.

The publication of this legal notice defies logic, as applications which are about to expire are renewed almost automatically. So what is the reason to suddenly offer a blanket extension to all applications with the excuse of a construction industry struggling COVID-19 crisis?

Such a brazen blanket extension makes the forthcoming reforms of the SPED, Out of Development Zone and Petrol Station Policies merely token policies, since all extended applications will not need to conform to these policy revisions.

The Planning Authority and the politicians who drive it make it crystal clear yet again, that their priority is not the regulation of planning systems that ensure the public’s well-being, but the fostering of the destructive construction mania so eagerly promoted by the development lobby.