Architects warn planning amnesty ‘will promote laissez-faire attitude of developers’

A planning amnesty launched on Monday risks “promoting the laissez-faire attitude of certain developers” by providing a mechanism to legalise illegalities, the Architects’ Chamber has warned.

In a hard-hitting statement, the Chamber said that its reactions to the draft legal notice had largely been ignored and that the government did not call them in for discussions to address their concerns.

As such, it warned that the final version includes too many lacunae and vague requirements and risks opening the door to “severe blots” on the built landscape.

The three-year scheme will apply for buildings within development zones that appear on the Planning Authority’s aerial photographs for 2016, against a minimum €1,000 fees. Unlike previous regularization legal notices in 2012 and 2013, this scheme will not merely offer concessions but rather full planning permits.

Applications will be rejected if they constitute an “injury to amenity”, that is if they pose a risk to the comfort, convenience, safety, security and utility in its surroundings.  Property owners whose applications are denied will be refunded 90% of their application fee.

Property owners have a two-year period in which to apply, while the legal notice also allows the PA to extend the scheme for a third year with fees 25% higher.

Parliamentary secretary for planning Deborah Schembri on Monday hailed the scheme as a “unique turning point” that will benefit several Maltese people who are unable to sell their properties because they have some form of planning illegality.

However, the Chamber of Architects warned that the legal notice contains several vague statements that, unlike previous CTB concessions, make no distinction between minor and major irregularities. Also, the term ‘regularisation’ itself is not defined and the term ‘injury to amenity’ has been left wide open to interpretation.

Moreover, the legal notice contains no provision for public consultation on individual applications, nor with consultation with authorities such as the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage and the National Commission for People with Disability. There is no mechanism for third parties to register an interest in an application unless they had previously reported the illegality to the PA, and third parties do not have a right of appeal. Despite Schembri’s insistence that the meetings will be taken at public sittings, such a provision is not specifically stipulated in the legal notice.

The Chamber also noted that, unlike ODZ properties, properties which are located within urban conservation areas or which are themselves scheduled have not been excluded. Furthermore, there is no obligation for the Planning Authority to issue an enforcement notice or to request the removal of the illegality in applications that they refuse.

“Such observations render these new regulations unclear and widely open to interpretation,” the Chamber said. “Above all, they fail to address the importance of promoting quality of our building stock by allowing irregularities to be regularized and made legal.”

Deborah Schembri on Monday argued that planning irregularities are so rampant in Malta that knocking down all illegalities would render the country unrecognizable.

“Banks refuse to loan money to people who want to purchase houses to planning illegalities,” she said. “This means that some separate couples are forced to live under the same roof, and that cancer patients are unable to sell their houses to fund their chemotherapy treatment. Through this scheme, the value of their properties will rise significantly.

“In an ideal world, our point of departure would be that all illegalities are wrong but we must be realistic. Had we not taken this decision now, then someone else would have had to take the same decision in the future, when there would have been even more planning illegalities.”