Mepa’s scheduling of parish churches

News of the scheduling of our parish churches by the Heritage Planning Unit within the Malta Environment and Planning Authority was very welcome indeed. Through this exercise, “a total of 50 parish churches around Malta and Gozo have been officially granted the highest level of protection and, thus, scheduled as Grade 1 monuments as per government notice 782/11” (Outlook, Issue 18, October 2011).

According to Matthew Vella, who led the project within Mepa, this scheduling means “that only restorative works will be allowed to take place on both the internal and external of the building and that even such works can only be carried out with Mepa’s approval and monitoring”.

As a layman in these matters I would like to enquire about the implications of this statement. For example, does this level of protection preclude the fixing of mobile antennae on our churches? If the answer is in the affirmative, what about the churches which have already been negatively affected by previous policies? Do the implications of this scheduling exercise by Mepa apply retroactively?

I am raising this issue because I am still hoping that the relatively large number of cellular antennae which have been fixed – and unprofessionally so, in my opinion – on the dome of Balzan parish church in the last few years, ruining in the process its aesthetic charm and disrupting its architectural features, will be removed in due time, thereby restoring the dome to its original state.