Mepa has no deterrent that precludes it from carrying out injustices, especially where consistency and punctuality of its decisions are concerned, the Malta Developers Association said this morning.

In a statement, the MDA referred to the recently announced overhaul of Mepa penalties for illegal development, and said that while it agreed that Mepa should have an effective deterrent to curb abuse at its disposal it was high time for Mepa to also become subject to penalties when injustices were suffered by applicants as a result of its actions or inaction.

The MDA also said it was also deeply concerned that Mepa did not have a clear policy on renewals of existing permits.

“While MDA maintains that all permits issued by Mepa under the current planning regime should be automatically renewed, Mepa has not yet committed itself to an unambiguous written policy on renewals of development permits.

“The lack of a clear policy on renewal of permits means that holders of permits do not have any guarantee that their permits would be renewed unless relevant sites are committed.

“Although the current slowdown in the property market indicates that it would not be in their interest to carry out all approved developments within the validity period of relative permits, developers are concluding that they have no alternative but to start works since this is the only way to ensure that their permits are not lost.

“This leads to an increase in sites where development works have been started but not finished.”