[WATCH] 'We are pro-business doers' - Michael Falzon

Michael Falzon on MEPA's High Rise Policy • Video by Ray Attard

"We are pro business and doers...We could not afford to do like our predecessors, sitting pretty  and talk instead of work...and wait for  another 10 years to pass for parliament to approve the Strategic Plan on the Environment and Development  insteading of addressing all the policy vacuums."

This was planning parliamentary secretary's Michael Falzon justification for 14 new policies which are being enacted before the approval of the new local plans and the substitution of the Structure Plan with a Strategic Plan for the Environment and  Development which risks being conditioned by a set of allready approved sectoral policies on themes ranging from fireworks factories and cemeteries to hotel heights.

Falzon was addressing a media briefing on the approved policy on hotel heights which allows all hotels within development zones to add two new storeys over and above the height limitations established in local plans  and allows stand alone hotels or hotels surrounded by roads on all four sides to add an unlimited number of storeys.  The policy makes it clear that this does not mean that any application will be approved and that the visual impact of each application will be assessed.

The parliamentary secretary who is also responsible for government owned properties did not exclude that the polcy is meant to maximise the value of government properties before these are sold to private developers.  One major change introduced during teh consultation period is that the new policy on hotel heights is not limited to existing hotels but is applicable to newly constructed hotels.

"It is time to move away from the mentality that government land is something to be disposed cheaply...Although this is not the driving force of the new policy...there is nothing wrong if we use government assets  if this has no negative impact on the foreshore and the environment."

In may the  government has already approved a policy regulating heigh rise buildings.  The policy makes a blanket ban on high rise buildings in Gozo.  No such blanket ban is found in the new policy on hotel heights even if the new policy foresees unlimited height increases for stand alone hotels. MEPA official Sylvio Farriugia made it clear that any height additions in Gozo are likely to be limited to a two storey increase in Xlendi and Marsalforn.  He also insisted that any application will be assessed on its merits and therefore any undesirable visual impacts will be assessed.

Farrugia also contends that the idea of extending the height mechanism to new hotels was driven by feedback from owners of existing hotels who would like to demolish and rebuild their hotels entirely.

The new policy makes it clear that any additional traffic created  by new hotels rising over and above two storeys will have to be catered for within the hotel or by carparks situated in a 250 meter radius. A legal agreement will stipulate that no change of use from tourism purposes will be allowed on hotels which benefit from the new heights policy.

In his address Tourism Minister Edward Zammit Lewis referred to the fact that "there are a number of persons who will immediately benefit from the new policy." He described the new policy as an "opportunity" to the private sector to improve the product and not as a blanket permession to increase the number of rooms.