Two houses, two decisions

The other day someone drew my attention to the write up on The Times (January 17) titled Mepa's Audit Officer Calls On Officials To Resign.

Although I agree 100 per cent with the title, I ask readers to go through my letter and examine the accompanying picture and then decide whether they agree with me that I have suffered discrimination.

About a year ago, I had submitted an application to demolish the house in the picture. My architect had drawn a plan of a new façade that matches the new block next door and the other houses in the road.

After the board had seen the new plan submitted by my architect, a member of the board told the others that it will be discriminatory if they won't let me demolish the house. In a few minutes my application was refused. Later on during the week I received a letter from Mepa where they told me that my house cannot be demolished because it has historical values and forms part of a row of similar buildings.

I am the founder of a voluntary foundation involved in the restoration of historical machinery. Therefore, I am familiar with several historical places and restoration works such as the underground emergency flour mill in Mistra and a number of other historical places which I cannot pinpoint for security reasons.

I wrote back to Mepa asking them to list the historical values they speak of and which I had never noticed in my house. I also told them that there is no other house similar to mine because the other houses all have windows next to the balcony door and mine has no such window.

When I attended another meeting of the board I took about 20 photos of old houses that were demolished last year. Some photos showed two houses - before and after demolition works - that used to form part of a row of similar buildings in St Paul's Bay. I also showed them photos of houses with historical values that were demolished only a few weeks ago.

I was getting quite nervous because I had repeatedly asked them what the historical values of my house were and yet no one gave me a reply.

My permit was refused again!

When I attended a third board meeting I tried to remain calm. I tried to show the board more photographs of houses having great historical values and that were demolished a few days before but they didn't take any notice of them. I am sure they remembered me from the second meeting. This time I could only notice two persons following my case and the others were either eating biscuits, drinking coffee and/or using mobile phones.

Suddenly someone asked to refer to the Local Plan volume, which was sitting on a nearby desk. Everyone got interested in the local plans and in a few seconds they voted six to one and again refused my application. Asking anybody: Which house has historical values, the one in the photo or the one behind Tal-Karmnu chapel (next to a block of new flats) in St Paul's Street, St Paul's Bay, which will soon be completely demolished?

In the circumstances I feel I am justified in accusing Mepa of having two weights and two measures, as indeed it has been accused so many times before.