The problem of illegal boathouses was “bigger than Mepa”, the director of enforcement within the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, Alexander Borg, said this morning.

Speaking during a Mepa briefing, Mr Borg said the authority had at least stopped the building of new illegal boat houses with the cut-off date being 1992.

Asked about the boathouses at San Tumas in Marsascala, he said the local plan stipulated that a study had to take place for an action plan to be drawn up. The study was underway, he said. But until the action plan was in place, and this did not depend just on the authority, there was very little Mepa could do.

An action plan for Armier already existed and there was an application at Mepa for the redevelopment of the site according to a plan.

Mr Borg also spoke about enforcement and said the authority had started to refer certain cases for criminal action.

In such cases, the enforcement would be led by the police.  This usually also served as a deterrent.

Examples of such cases were enforcement action on a building in Rabat that was being used as a wedding hall illegally and large cases where direct action did not make material sense for the authority

Mepa chief executive Ian Stafrace said the authority will be issuing for public consultation a partial review of a number of policies with the aim of a flexible approach being adopted permitting certain development  that would have otherwise been blocked by the local plan.

Such development had to be compatible with the area.

He noted that the provisions of the law which did not allow for sanctioning in outside development zones and scheduled areas had left a positive impact, in the sense that much less illegal development was taking place.

Mepa, he said, received 2,000 to 3,000 new reports on illegalities each year.