DCC resumes meetings
No agenda yet for Mepa board's public hearings
The Malta Environment and Planning Authority's Development Control Commission resumed its meetings yesterday with 151 items on its agenda after the meetings were stopped for a few days following the election "as part of the Mepa reform process".
There is no agenda yet for the Mepa board's public hearings.
A spokesman for the authority said yesterday that the DCC meetings were now being held in the mornings instead of the afternoon to provide a better service to applicants, objectors and architects.
Mepa was carrying out a public consultation exercise on this administrative change and welcomed comments and suggestions by the public at enquiries@mepa.org.mt up to May 14.
Following criticism by the Chamber of Architects, Mepa defended its decision to hold the DCC meetings in the mornings saying the measure was introduced in view of clear administrative benefits to the operations of the authority and, therefore, the public.
Mepa Board sittings had always been held in the morning, attracted the greatest number of people and never generated any controversy on the timing, transparency, lack of visibility of the board's workings and limiting access to the decision making process, Mepa chairman Andrew Calleja said.
In a letter to the chamber, Mr Calleja pointed out that public institutions regulated their administrative working hours without the need of consultation and this had no bearing on transparency and accountability.
Notwithstanding this, Mepa was seeking public opinion on the matter, he said.
Mepa was full of practising architects in the morning, all going about their business, conducting meetings and visiting the planning shop. Therefore, it followed that, while the architects were at Mepa, they could attend the DCC sittings, the chairman added.
If this was inconvenient, Mepa could consider the architects' suggestion, revert the sittings to the afternoons and dedicate the planning shop morning working hours exclusively to the public, reserving the afternoons to architects. This arrangement could even be extended to case officers, maximising the use of resources.
Any eventual decision, however, would be based on the comments and reactions Mepa received by the end of the consultation period, he pointed out.