Labour’s Żejtun committee president warns of ‘relentless greed’ threatening historic urban centres

Brian Scicluna, the president of the Labour Party’s Żejtun committee, has accused developers of “relentless greed” and warned historic urban centres across Malta are under increasing threat.

He said localities are under siege from what he described as excessive and incompatible development.

In a post uploaded to his Facebook page, the committee president said Malta has already “built over its fields” and allowed pencil developments to erode traditional terraced-house areas. Now, he argued, developers had shifted their focus to Urban Conservation Areas (UCAs), placing pressure on the country’s historic cores.

He pointed to recent proposals in Ħal Tarxien and Ħaż-Żabbar as examples. In Tarxien, he noted, a proposal for 12 apartments in the heart of the locality’s UCA attempted to bypass regulations by placing the building’s main entrance on a side street outside the protected zone. He praised the Tarxien Local Council for filing strong objections “in favour of residents and sustainability.”

A protest was also held last week in Ħaż-Żabbar against what residents described as an excessive care-home development in the town’s historic centre. The Żejtun committee president similarly commended the Żabbar Local Council for objecting “forcefully” on environmental and community grounds.

He said a new proposal in Żejtun risked repeating the same pattern. The project, he said, foresees 45 garages and around 10 apartments in the core of Żejtun’s UCA. Developers had argued the design would retain the existing historic façades, but the committee president dismissed this as insufficient.

“The character of a UCA is not just the façade,” he said. “Leaving a shell and building a monster behind it is blatant overdevelopment.”

He argued the proposal contradicted conservation goals and threatened the integrity of safeguarded areas.

The scale of development, including dozens of garages, was “completely exaggerated and incompatible with the historic fabric,” he said. He also claimed the project ran counter to the Strategic Plan for the Environment and Development (SPED), which emphasises the protection of traditional streetscapes and historic layouts.

Calling the proposal “an insult not only to Żejtun but to all UCAs in Malta,” he urged residents, NGOs and public figures to speak out as others had done in Tarxien and Żabbar.

He expressed hope that the Planning Authority would heed the advice of the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage and reject the Żejtun application.

Joan Agius, Mayor of Zejtun, clarified on his post that the council has objected the development