Government orders audit of development applications

Environment Minister George Pullicino has asked the National Audit Office to analyse the mechanisms by which the Malta Environment and Planning Authority processes development applications, in a bid to remove excessive bureaucracy and make the authority more customer-friendly.

The audit, comprising three different reports that should be on the minister's desk by the end of the year, cover three main processing stages at which development applications usually stall.

With a good sample of development applications processed by Mepa, the Management Efficiency Unit, responsible for carrying out the first audit, should assess the role of different government departments when applications are passed on to them for consultation.

Mepa itself relied on other government departments and authorities to process development applications since it had been set up as a one stop shop to save people from having to waste time running from one department to another, Mr Pullicino told the media at the start of a meeting with NAO representatives, MEU personnel, Mepa chairman Andrew Calleja and British consultant Leslie Robinson.

The second audit, Mr Pullicino said, would report on the content and quality of development permission application reports (DPAR) which propose whether an application should be accepted or refused.

The auditors' terms of reference here would be to see whether the case officers' reports properly quoted regulations to sustain or refute an application and whether the research carried out painted a clear picture of the situation that enabled the Mepa board to decide quickly.

"I want this exercise to pinpoint the people who are not delivering and if there is dead wood it will be trimmed. Otherwise, particular case officers will be retrained," Mr Pullicino said, explaining the depth and scope of the reports.

The third audit would report on the submissions that architects file in the name of a developer. "The development control board often says architects submit weak proposals and this does not help in the processing of applications," he said. Most of these applications have to do with alterations on existing buildings.

The auditors had to come up with concrete recommendations on how the situation could improve.

The minister said that notwithstanding the common perception that Mepa was bureaucratic and inefficient, statistics showed that 80 per cent of applications were processed within legally acceptable time frames. "Having said this, we are not complacent because of statistics. We require an improvement in quality and efficiency," Mr Pullicino said.