PA will not renew Kalkara valley-side project permit but instead reassess it afresh in exceptional move

The Planning Authority has refrained from taking a decision on the proposed renewal of two permits for development on a green area in Kalkara.

In a decision taken on Thursday, the PA argued the application has to be considered as a brand-new application and assessed by present day policies.

The proposed development includes 88 apartments and 93 garages on 6,200sq.m of valley-side fields close to the Kalkara parish church.

The project proposed by Lawrence Fino was originally approved in 2012 despite strong objections by the Kalkara local council but was renewed in the absence of any controversy in 2017.

But the developers failed to commence works and applied to renew the permit while adding a substation requested by Enemalta.

Following a terse exchange with Fino’s lawyer, Ian Stafrace, and a 30-minute suspension of the meeting, planning authority chairman Emmanuel Camilleri announced that the board was removing the permit application from its agenda. He said it was to be reassessed not as a renewal application but as a full application. 

The chairman justified this decision by referring to the inclusion of a sub-station in the new plans and the fact that no commencement notice for works to start had been issued following the 2017 renewal.

Photomontage of the Kalkara valley-side development presented by the developer

The decision to order a full assessment means that the project will have to be assessed on the basis of the Strategic Plan for the Environment and Development, which includes generic objectives protecting townscapes and green spaces in urban areas.

Curiously the development was already being recommended for approval in a case officer report which referred to the SPED in passing.

The decision to restart the assessment process was taken following a terse exchange between board members and Ian Stafrace, the former PA chief executive who represented Lawrence Fino.

At the beginning of the meeting PA executive chairman Oliver Magro cited the legal advice given to the board based on recent court decisions, that the application has to be assessed in full on the basis of the Strategic Plan for Environment and Development approved in 2015 three years after the development was originally approved. Moreover, since no authorisation had been issued through a commencement notice for the works to start, a previous renewal issued in 2017 had expired. This meant that the application could no longer be considered as a renewal.

The PA official was referring to a decision by the law courts to revoke the renewal of the permit for a massive residential development on the site of the former Mistra Village which was sent  back to the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal to consider whether the project is still compatible to current planning laws and policies. 

Magro’s argument was rebutted by the developers’ lawyer, who argued the PA had already renewed the permit in 2017 when the SPED was already in place.  Stafrace warned that this would set a precedent on other cases involving renewal applications, limiting renewals to developments already covered by a commencement notice.

He also pointed out that on various occasions renewal applications are being issued through a “summary procedure” a fast-tracked procedure which enables approval in 42 days without even the need of a case officer report.

In fact Fino himself had initially tried to use the fast tracked procedure when presenting the renewal application last year.

To substantiate his argument Stafrace referred to the recent approval of a 34-storey high rise project in central Malta which was approved through the summary procedure. Although Stafrace did not name the project in question  he was clearly referring to the Metropolis project in Gzira whose renewal was approved through the summary procedure in the absence of a case officer report, despite being clearly in breach of a local plan policy protecting views of Valletta from the University of Malta.