Villa Rosa: When local plans are not cast in stone

Development on the Villa Rosa site is regulated by a generous local plan policy that already allows development of up to seven floors on parts of the site. This led to the approval of a project with a floor area of a staggering 141,000 sq.m, which included a seven-storey development instead of the historical Moynihan House, a building which, according to heritage experts, merited inclusion in the list of scheduled buildings.

Subsequently, the developers presented another application that includes two high-rise towers of 34 and 27 floors, increasing the floor area to 237,000 sq.m by applying the ‘floor area ratio’ mechanism, which allows higher buildings in return for larger open spaces.

The Superintendence for Cultural Heritage has already noted that the project, as proposed, will alter and in some cases completely obscure views of the historical Villa Rosa.

Now, The Times of Malta is reporting that the government intends to change the local plan to accommodate more development in the area.  The Planning Authority still has to commence public consultation on the proposed changes and details of what is being proposed are not yet known.

Beyond the impact on the immediate surroundings and long-distance views, this raises an important question: Why change the local plans to accommodate developers and not change them to accommodate local communities?

Whenever faced with applications for development on sites added to the development zone in the 2006 local plans, residents are always told that the government’s hands are tied by the local plans approved nearly 20 years ago. On several occasions, the government claimed that any changes would entail compensation to owners, even if legal experts have told this newspaper that “expecting the law not to change in the future is not considered a legitimate expectation under EU law.”

Anyone familiar with the planning process knows that local plans are regularly changed or tweaked to shift the planning goalposts on individual sites, mostly for the benefit of developers. However, these are rarely changed to exclude or reduce the scale of development.

The only significant exception was the policy allowing a yacht marina and tourist development in Hondoq ir-Rummien, which was changed to exclude this development. So far, the government has faced no legal challenge from the owners demanding compensation, which suggests that previous declarations on the matter were just hogwash.

Moreover, the Hondoq decision also raises an important question: why not repeat this exercise on a national level to push back on overdevelopment, which, according to a MaltaToday survey published on Sunday, is one of the main concerns of the Maltese people?

What’s certain is that if the government moves ahead with changing the goalposts for the Villa Rosa development, it will inevitably face a backlash from all the local communities left in the cold by the government whenever they call for changes to the local plans in their towns and villages. For whenever local plans are invoked to blame present-day mayhem on George Pullicino, people will ask: why are you changing the goalposts at Villa Rosa?