Boathouses' future rests on approval of Marfa Action Plan

The planning authority is still waiting for the Marfa Action Plan to be approved by the Prime Minister before any decisions can be taken on the Armier boathouses, which are still in a state of illegality.

During a media briefing yesterday, Austin Walker, the Malta Environment and Planning Authority chairman, said the locality's action plan was still a draft since it had to be approved by the Prime Minister, responsible for the authority, before it became legally binding.

According to Mr Walker, there are around 800 boathouses in Armier.

Over the past two years the government refrained from taking action to remove the Armier boathouse community despite a crusade by the Land Department against illegal encroachment of public land.

Ever since a botched attempt by the government to demolish the illegal shanty town in 1991, the issue has surfaced at every election with boathouse owners reaching agreements with both government and opposition on ways to regularise their position.

In 2005, Armier Developments Ltd, a company set up by the Armier boathouse community, submitted a development application to turn the shanty town into an organised cluster of beach houses.

The government had proposed a similar plan in 2001, which was incorporated into the Marfa Action Plan. However, following a public outcry, the project was placed on the backburner until 2005 when the boat owners filed their own plans for the construction of 1,500 boathouses, a third being allocated to people who do not own a boathouse there.

However, the application cannot be determined by Mepa before the Marfa Action Plan is approved.

Mr Walker said there were another 140 boathouses in Ġnejna and around 370 in St Thomas Bay in Marsascala.

The manager of Mepa's Enforcement Unit, architect Alex Borg, said enforcement in these cases was not straightforward since the authority had to determine which boathouses were standing before 1992 and in some cases their work was hampered by court proceedings.

In the case of Armier, the government had stipulated 1992 as a cut-off date and only boathouses built after that would be demolished.

Speaking about Mepa's enforcement drive, Mr Borg said there were 95 cases of direct action last year, a substantial increase from the 23 a year earlier. Mepa spent €177,000 on direct actions in 2009 and was owed more than €500,000 in outstanding payments for removal works.

Mr Borg said the authority carried out more than 8,600 monitoring inspections last year, a heavy burden for the 44 people employed with the enforcement unit.

The Mepa reform will see the unit turn into a directorate with more clout and resources.