The Villa Barbaro issue and the planning authority

With regard to the Villa Barbaro issue (Judicial Action To Protect Scheduled Country House, July 8) where the owner of a Grade 1 scheduled heritage site is protesting about the incompatible design and excessive height of a proposed structure next door to it and the Malta Environment and Planning Authority’s persistent failure to consult its own experts on the Heritage Committee about it, one thing truly amazes me. I can express it in two very simple questions:

(1) If not for a top-grade scheduled heritage site like Villa Barbaro and its gardens what is consultation with Mepa’s own Heritage Committee really reserved for?

(2) Why not consult it when the law’s drafting allows Mepa to go against that advice anyway if it so wishes?

Is it not bad enough that the law makes consultation with the country’s foremost heritage experts, even on Grade 1 heritage sites, merely elective and not mandatory, so that reference to those experts best qualified on the matter is made dependent on a commission that is entirely free to bypass the experts in favour of its own unaided assessment?

Is it not perhaps the case that by failing to consult its own heritage experts in cases such as this, Mepa could unfortunately be giving rise to the harmful public perception that it would rather proceed without expert advice?

What is certain is that the Heritage Committee is often being consulted over smaller matters but passed over and effectively rendered voiceless in a serious case like this of a top-grade heritage site threatened by adjacent development.

These questions have already been raised by organisations like Flimkien Għal Ambjent Aħjar and Din 1-Art Ħelwa and the unfortunate drafting of the protective law in this regard is leading to a situation where our built heritage is being seriously imperilled.

What are the Prime Minister and the parliamentary secretary responsible for this area prepared to do about it?