Blowing in the wind

The Presence of practising architects on MEPA's Development Control Commission (DCC) has suddenly become an issue - an issue that, I dare say, reflects the wrong attitude of those who brought it up in the first place, more than the actual need of something that needs sorting out.

In every building permit/planning regime that we have had in Malta, practising architects have historically always been present on the decision-making bodies. I am sure no one can pin the past and present errors and false moves in our planning history - whether serious and enormous or otherwise - on this presence. Indeed the mistakes that have actually led to the most damning results in this area were inspired by undue political decisions made for ulterior motives, and not the result of the presence of practising architects on the permit-issuing body.

Wherever there is human activity, there is bound to be disagreement. More so in planning issues where conflicting conclusions can be reached through perfectly logical and sensible reasoning. Planning will always be a matter of compromise and compromise will always be refused by fundamentalists who want to impose their values on others and on society at large. This is why planning issues are inherently a constant source of controversy all over the world.

The setting up of the Planning Authority (later to become MEPA) was intended to replace political diktat in planning matters and in the issue of building permits by a transparent process leading to compromise based decisions.

Unfortunately, looking by hindsight at how MEPA works leads to the conclusion that bureaucracy has beaten transparency hands down - but I have to postpone this particular argument for another day.

Any good decision-making process must also necessarily include a built-in system of checks and balances; otherwise the whole process would tend to become warped one way or another. This is where the point of having a DCC comes in. The Planning Directorate studies applications for development and makes recommendations on them but the decision on the issue of a permit is made by the DCC.

Admittedly the DCC is a strange animal made of a chairman and three members nominated by the minister and three members nominated by MEPA, not being MEPA employees. The point is that the DCC has to be once removed from MEPA that is considered to be a semi-autonomous institution. Leaving building permit decisions to people employed by MEPA, as has been suggested, would create an imbalance of power and an inherent conflict of interest as such a 'DCC' would simply be an arrangement whereby MEPA employees rubber-stamp recommendations made by MEPA employees.

In other European countries, there is normally no such strange animal as MEPA's DCC. Decisions on issue of building permits are taken by local or regional councils, i.e. by the local politicians. In the UK, moreover, appeals against such decisions are decided by the Minister of the central government. In Malta, it was felt that giving such powers to local or regional councils would not help to sort the mess that planning had found itself in after the experience of the Seventies and early Eighties.

Imagine a Gozo Regional Council deciding on the issue of building permits in Gozo and imagine the manner in which my friends Saviour Balzan and Pamela Hansen - let alone others like Alan Deidun - would be writing about such a process! In my opinion, this is definitely one area where our insularity and population density should preclude us from emulating European practice.

The presence of practising architects on the DCC members certainly does not put them in a dominating position in MEPA, as has been alleged. Their presence is vital as they have the feel of what is happening outside MEPA - where the rest of the citizens live. I have seen non-technical members of the DCC who were evidently absolutely incapable of following the discussion on particular applications cover up their shortcomings by making what they think were intelligent sounding noises and voting that split second after the chairman whom they follow blindly. Yet nobody has ever complained of DCC chairmen having, in practice, more than one vote!

Practising architects are a vital ingredient of the DCC set-up. This is not to say that I always agree with the way they carry out their responsibility. I have often fumed at some of them insisting on irrelevant detail to the extent that this insistence ends up by clouding the issue at hand. But then, this is an area where disagreement is part of the way things are done, as I have already pointed out.

Much has also been said about one particular DCC board that decides on applications for developments in areas that are 'Outside Development Zones' (ODZ). In his article in this newspaper last Sunday, Alan Deidun has confirmed that Nature Trust is objecting to all such applications. That organisation has certainly the right to do so (thanks to the setting up of the Planning Authority) but, personally, I think that using this right in such a sweeping all-embracing way is actually diluting the clout of these objections. In other words, the 'no' of whoever says 'no' to everything tends to become irrelevant.

Incidentally, this is also happening in the case of negative recommendations made by the Planning Directorate. There are too many of them, when many of these recommendations could easily become positive ones after a mature discussion - leading to changes in the proposal - with the applicant or his architect.

In this scenario there is, however, another conflict of interest that no one speaks about. This is the situation of members of environmental NGOs who are also MEPA employees. Many NGOs have inside information that is not available to the public. This is very obvious from the way Nature Trust presents its objections to development applications.

In a case I know of, the arguments made by a private architect in a confidential discussion between him and a team from the Planning Directorate on a particular application ended up being rebutted publicly by Alan Deidun in this newspaper when these arguments were still being considered. It is obvious that there are too many MEPA employees whose first loyalty is to the NGO they are involved in and not to their employer - a conflict of interest that has to be tackled if MEPA is to be taken seriously.

Sadly, this is a case where too many people are making noises - whether by blowing whistles or their own trumpet... or the French horn for that matter - in such a way that precludes them from hearing whatever is being said by others. This is the surest way how to be of disservice to the democratic society that we should all strive to uphold.

micfal@maltanet.net