Portomaso residents file for injunction against appeals tribunal decision

Portomaso residents have filed a prohibitory injunction against a decision by an appeals tribunal to overturn a refusal to build villas on an artificial lagoon at the Portomaso marina.

The residents, represented by lawyer Ian Spiteri Bailey, are protesting a decision by MEPA's new 'part-time' appeals board, appointed by the Labour government in July, to issue a permit for the Tumas Group to construct 46 villas on an artificial lagoon at Portomaso. They are asking the court to stop MEPA from issuing the permit within 30 days, as requested by the appeals tribunal.

In a judicial protest presented in parallel to the request for an injunction against the project, the residents insist that the Malta Environment and Planning Authority is duty bound to appeal against the sentence issued by the Appeal's Tribunal. "We have indications that MEPA is not appealing against the decision even if MEPA normally exercises this right in similar circumstances."

According to the residents MEPA is duty bound to to defend its own decision taken in 2012.

The residents insist that their rights have been violated because they had bought their properties in the knowledge that MEPA was bound by a condition not to issue any permits to extend the development beyond what was approved originally in 1995.

The controversial extension to Portomaso had been turned down by the MEPA board on 26 April 2012, after chairman Austin Walker used his casting vote. The board members had been tied with six votes in favour and six against, after a four-hour debate held at the Mediterranean Conference Centre. 

The new appeals aboard that decided to overturn the MEPA board decision is composed of Labour candidate and lawyer Simon Micallef Stafrace, architect and Freeport chairman Robert Sarsero, and MEPA official Martin Saliba.

At both stages, the main bone of contention was a clause in the previous Portomaso permit of 1996 which stated that no further extension or development could be carried out in the area.

However, the legal representatives and the architects of George Fenech's Tumas Group, who want to develop the land, argued that the local plan approved 10 years later included this particular site as suitable for development.

On that occasion Labour's representative on the MEPA board, Roderick Galdes - today parliamentary secretary for animal welfare and agriculture - had voted in favour of the project.

The new appeals board has effectively revoked the 2012 decision and ordered MEPA to issue the controversial permit within 30 days.

The area in question, described as the "southern ecological zone", was deemed

Portomaso residents objecting to the project argued that the Development Planning Act states that no development plan can reverse or even modify the terms and conditions of a development permission.

The Tumas Group also forms part of Gem Holdings, a joint venture with the Gasan Group, which acts as the Maltese partner in the Electrogas consortium that will construct Malta's new 200MW LNG-powered power plant.