Court confirms illegality of Bahrija gate

A long-running dispute over public access at Blata tal-Melħ in Baħrija has reached its conclusion in the Court of Appeal, which has confirmed that a gate blocking a historic passageway is illegal and cannot be sanctioned.

The ruling, presided over by judge Mark Simiana on, effectively blocks further attempts to regularise the structure. The case concerns a gate erected across a rural pathway that the Ramblers Association has long argued forms part of a historic public right of way used for decades.

The first formal decision came in 2020, when the Planning Authority (PA) refused an application to sanction the gate. The authority concluded the structure obstructed an established access route and could not be justified through planning regularisation mechanisms.

The decision was appealed before the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal (EPRT), which in a ruling delivered in 2025 upheld the PA’s position.

The tribunal accepted evidence presented by the Ramblers Association, including historical usage and field documentation, and ruled that the gate could not be sanctioned. 

It also rejected the argument made by lawyer Robert Musumeci that pre-1967 pathways on private land are not automatically considered “public country pathways” upholding the principle that long-established public pathways must remain open even when they cross private land.

The matter was then taken to the Court of Appeal, which confirmed the earlier findings, definitively ruling that the structure is illegal and cannot be regularised.

While the case moved through successive stages of appeal, enforcement action was effectively stalled. The submission of a sanctioning application, followed by prolonged proceedings before both the EPRT and the Court of Appeal, meant that the Planning Authority’s original refusal could not be translated into immediate physical enforcement on site. 

A separate appeal filed by Ian Galea one of the directors of Touchstone Limited against the planning enforcement issued in 2021 is still pending in front of the EPRT.

But the court decision should seal the outcome of this appeal.

The Ramblers’ Association which was assisted by its lawyer Joe Ellis, described the judgment as a “massive win” for public access to the countryside, arguing that it confirms that private ownership cannot extinguish long-established rights of way.

The gate has been installed by Touchstone Ltd, a company owned by the same Baħrija landowners who back in 2005 had tried to evict a number of farmers from a 1,500-tumolo land parcel they had bought from the Barony of Bahria.