ODZ ‘no longer ODZ’ under proposed MEPA rule

The government intends removing the blanket ban on the regularisation of development outside development zones (ODZ) and scheduled areas like areas of ecological and scientific importance.

This emerges from consultation document “For an efficient planning system” which was issued for public consultation yesterday. The document is a consultation paper on the proposed split of MEPA into separate environment and planning authorities.

Article 70 of the Environment and Development Planning Act enacted by the previous government in December 2010 prohibited the MEPA (Malta Environment and Planning Authority) from regularising any illegal developments built in ODZ or scheduled areas.

The sixth schedule of the Environment and Development Planning Act also bans MEPA from regularising any illegal extension to ODZ development.

Aerial photos taken in May 2008 were used to determine whether  development had been carried out after this date, to assist MEPA in refusing any requests to ‘sanction’ these extensions.

According to the consultation document, the deletion of the sixth schedule will be replaced by the imposition of daily fines: ostensibly, this would mean that daily fines start incurring from the day somebody applies to regularise their illegal development, to the date that MEPA issues permission.

The consultation document also aims at “safeguarding implemented development rights from scheduling or conservation orders” – what this means is that the government will be prevented from issuing conservation orders when MEPA has already issued a development permit.

This would mean that permits for developments such as the four-storey apartment block proposed in 2008 on Lija’s Transfiguration Avenue, right next to the Lija Belvedere, cannot be revoked by a government-issued conservation order.

In September 2008, the four-storey block next to the Belvedere tower – approved some months before – was stopped through a conservation order following protests by the Lija council. MEPA stopped the development through a conservation order that prohibited any buildings higher than two floors around the Belvedere’s immediate area.

Robert Musumeci, now planning advisor to government in the parliamentary secretariat for planning – who was the Lija development’s architect at the time – had insisted that a permit, once granted, should prevail over any subsequent changes to the planning regime.

“For an efficient planning system” is the last in a series of policies issued by MEPA under the watch of Michael Farrugia, who has now been appointed social solidarity minister. His successor, Michael Falzon, was formerly the commissioner for the simplification of bureaucracy, and also one of the authors of a MEPA draft policy on fireworks factories.