The Mepa hearing on the controversial Fort Cambridge project hit an early snag after a statement announcing that the project had been approved accidentally ended up in the hands of the press before the meeting had even started yesterday.

The statement was found in one of the press packs which journalists collected when they arrived for the hearing at the Malta Environment and Planning Authority. A picture of the document was taken with a wrist watch over it indicating 10.16 a.m., moments before the sitting started.

The recently-appointed chairman, Austin Walker, was questioned about the statement by residents, who argued that the press release strongly implied that the whole hearing was a done deal.

He denied that the board had a set position or that any members of the board knew about the statement.

Mr Walker said that a similar statement that pre-empted a negative outcome had been prepared. But when asked for a copy of it by angry residents, who at this stage started shouting "scandal, scandal", he flatly refused.

"I don't think this is an issue or rather I don't think... I don't think it's in the public interest or even in that of the press at this point in time," he said in response to the request to see the other press release, as the rest of the board members remained silent.

The residents broke into frenzy at this stage but eventually settled down. "My answer is no..." he insisted when pressed.

The statement announcing the favourable decision carried the title: "Approved Fort Cambridge Project Loyal to Development Brief Guidelines".

Effectively, following a three-and-a-half-hour turbulent meeting, the board unanimously approved the project. A much shorter version of the original statement was issued much later in the afternoon as opposed to shortly after the hearing as is usually the case.

Mepa's PR executive said later in the afternoon that he had been asked to prepare draft press releases which took account of both a positive and a negative outcome.

"Upon receiving this instruction I started working on a press statement. As the PR executive I brought with me to the boardroom some personal working papers including the DPA case officer reports and a draft press release," he adds, referring twice to a singular press release.

"A member of the press, without authorisation, went through these papers while I went to usher in the public and other members of the media.

"This same journalist took the draft press release, which, being a draft, had inaccuracies with the application number and dates and maliciously began showing it to the other journalists and the public present.

"The journalist then started off the public hearing by saying that he was handed the press release in his press pack...," the PR executive said in a "clarification" e-mailed to editors.

However, journalists present insisted that the statement in question was discovered by a female colleague in the bunch of papers that she picked up from among others that were freely accessible.

The rest of the journalists present immediately took an interest in the document and several pictures were taken by their photographers.

At this point, the PR executive took the statement back and even asked one of the photographers to give him the pictures he had taken of the document but eventually gave up as the latter made clear he had no intention of obliging.

When asked to react to the incident later in the day, the Office of the Prime Minister said it had asked the authority for a clarification and essentially repeated Mepa's version that the PRO was instructed to prepare draft press statements prior to the meeting for both a positive and negative scenario.

However, no comment was forthcoming on the fact that the chairman refused to provide the second statement.

The development was reduced to 20 floors after the board decided in a sitting early last month that the original 23-floor proposal was excessive. During that sitting, Joe Farrugia, one of the board members who did not attend the meeting yesterday, suggested that the developers should stick to the 16 floors as stipulated in the local plan, given the overbearing visual impact which the project had on the area.

The developers returned with fresh plans for a 20-floor building but, despite being four floors higher than what was suggested by Mr Farrugia, the block will still be the equivalent in height to what a regular 16-floor building would be as each floor was trimmed so that the block would fit into this height limit, while retaining a larger number of apartments.

The building, however, still has a considerable visual impact on the area and on the view from Valletta - a point which the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage stressed in a last-minute letter sent to the authority.

The Labour Party issued a statement in connection with the press release incident in the afternoon demanding an explanation from both the Mepa chairman and the Prime Minister. "This fact raises serious questions about how the authority operates and reduces to a farce the public consultation which Mepa is supposed to carry out...," it said.

"Certainly, the authority can never be an example of transparency and accountability, as Dr Gonzi had promised before the election, when it prepares statements about the approval of a particular project before actually consulting people on the same project," it said.