A Valletta restaurant owner is pressing Mepa to withdraw a permit for the building of a structure on the Valletta bastions, arguing that it was issued on the basis of wrong information.

Cafe deux Baronnes owner Martin Baron said this afternoon that he had evidence that the Master Gunner's Quarters which Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna wants to rebuild on the site of his restaurant near the Upper Barrakka in Valletta, was never there in the first place. 

Mepa gave the NGO the green light some weeks ago, effectively spelling an end to Mr Baron's cafe. The Lands Department has told him that he must vacate the premises by Wednesday.

But Mr Baron said at a press conference that Mepa  had been completely misled.

"The Master Gunner's quarters, were actually a storey below," he said.

The building was demolished by aerial bombing during the war.

Mr Baron produced a series of architectural plans he had sourced from the National Archive as proof, including wartime damage report maps and Valletta plans denoting the area as "St Anthony's slum".

Measurements taken from the site tallied "perfectly" with the original Master Gunner plans, Mr Baron said, "right down to the existence of an eight-inch gulley".

He said that he had instructed architect Robert Musumeci to file a claim with Mepa to have FWA's planning permit revoked.

The claim, he said, would be based on the planning authority's article 77, which allows Mepa to revoke any permit proven to have been granted on the basis of incorrect or misleading information.

When contacted, FWA chairman Mario Farrugia dismissed Mr Baron's claims. "We're not concerned in the slightest. We know what we're doing and have all the documented evidence," he said.