St Augustine College’s primary school project (3)

Mepa’s refusal to grant a permit for the building of a primary school for 350 pupils at St Augustine’s College, Pietà, is proof, if ever it was needed, that there is no such thing as a ‘national policy’ that dictates that the building of new primary schools in the same sites as existing Church schools supersedes any Local Area Plans or Structure Plan policies.

There is no ‘national policy’ that gives the Church the right to build new primary schools wherever it pleases regardless of Mepa plans and planning policies

Readers may recall that in January last year Mepa auditor Joseph Falzon had condemned as “sheer incompetence or abuse” a Mepa case officer’s assessment of the Archbishop’s Seminary’s application to build a primary school next to its secondary school in Tal-Virtù.

Yet the Mepa board brushed aside the charge. It said the Archbishop’s Seminary “was one of the schools which had opted for structural expansion under ‘the education reform project’ to provide for the transition of students from primary to secondary school. This application was assessed in the light of this national policy which Mepa is obliged to follow and which supersedes the approved Local Plan... Therefore, there was sufficient evidence to support the siting of this project.”

So in just a few sentences, the Mepa board exempted the Seminary school from being subject to the applicable Local Area Plan or relevant Mepa policies, whether it was that restricting further development on the Seminary site, or that classifying Tal-Virtù as a Residential Priority Area, or that requiring any such project to have adequate and safe access to arterial roads.

St Augustine’s College wants to build a primary school for exactly the same reason as the Archbishop’s Seminary – the ‘education reform’; so how come the so-called ‘national policy’ didn’t trump Mepa plans or policies in this case, such as the Urban Conservation Area, or those aimed at preventing over-development or lack of parking space at Pietà?

Also, how come Transport Malta insisted on a traffic impact study for the Pietà application but not for that of Tal-Virtù? And this when the Seminary school expansion involved an even larger increase of students than that of St Augustine’s College, and when access to the Seminary school is ‘notoriously difficult’, as the Mepa auditor confirmed? Why the two weights and two measures?

So now what? Will Mepa let the Seminary primary school expand even further to absorb the 350 pupils who now cannot be accommodated at St Augustine’s? The Seminary has already accepted 150 such pupils.

The truth is, the approval of the Seminary primary school was a mistake, but Mepa won’t admit it. It can’t afford to.

Last February a group of Tal-Virtù residents applied to Mepa for the Seminary school permit to be revoked under Article 77 of the Development Planning Act, formerly known as Article 39A. A whole year has passed. And now the school has been built. How convenient!

The residents also drew the Archbishop’s attention to this travesty of justice. And it was not just a few Tal-Virtù residents who petitioned the Archbishop, but 225 people from other parts of Rabat too. They were ignored. How convenient!

Let’s stop this pointless charade that is dividing people unnecessarily, and let common sense prevail. Let us admit that this is simply a misguided, rash decision taken by the state and Church education authorities without proper consultation, and that Mepa has belatedly realised this only after its mistake at Tal-Virtù, taken at the expense of residents there.

Mepa cannot have it both ways. It should admit that there is, in fact, no ‘national policy’ that gives the Church the right to build new primary schools wherever it pleases regardless of Mepa plans and planning policies.

If Mepa insists that approving the Seminary school was not a mistake, then, to be consistent, it must ignore its own policies governing Pietà’s Urban Conservation Area and overturn its decision to refuse the permit for St Augustine’s College to build its primary school in its backyard.