Owners of caravans in Armier have no legal title to the land they occupied, according to government lawyers, who are insisting the court should confirm their eviction.
In a reply to an appeal filed by the 12 caravan owners and Armier Developments Ltd – a company made up of boathouse owners – against a court sentence that threw out their claims, the Land Commissioner insisted that they had no legal title to occupy public land.
The caravan owners are appealing a judgment by Mr Justice Anthony Ellul who last month ruled that the controversial caravans in Little Armier bay had no legal title and structures on publicly-owned property along the shore were illegal.
The Land Commissioner argued that there was no way that a letter by any previous government could be construed as a binding contract or taken to be an agreement allowing people who had usurped public land to continue occupying it.
He said the presence of the illegal caravans was preventing the attainment of a blue flag status for Armier Bay, with the consequences this was having on the tourism industry.
Moreover, they were also causing environmental damage.
The caravan owners had no legal title to the land in question and neither were they part of a scheme or had won some form of tender for the occupation of the land, the Land Commissioner insisted.
Two years ago, Armier Developments Ltd and the caravan occupants had sued the Commissioner of Land and the Attorney General, asking the court to declare they were legally entitled to make use of their structures.
They also sought a declaration that an eviction order issued against them by the Land Commissioner was unenforceable. In April 2003, just before the election, then Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg had written to Armier Developments Ltd saying the Government was prepared to accept the construction of a number of units in the area subject to certain conditions.
The arrangement was meant to regularise the illegal status of the shanty town that developed over the years in Armier.
The owners are insisting that the crux of the court case is not on whether they had legal title to the land in question, because they had never claimed legal title, but rather revolved around the agreement they argue they had with the Government on use of the land in the area.
However, the Land Commissioner is calling on the court to throw out the owners’ appeal and confirm the original judgment, giving him the green light to evict them once and for all.