Vince Cassar is no newcomer to the property sector, having spent some time as the president of the Chamber of Architects. When he took over as Mepa chairman just over a year ago, he was determined to set a new course for the authority, looking forward rather than wasting too much time on past mistakes. He spoke to Vanessa Macdonald about changes, some of them subtle.

Mepa extended the deadline for permits, which used to be five years from issue. What is the significance of this decision?

For business this is a very positive thing. Your permit is valid for a five-year period and if you do not manage to complete the development within that time period, you would have to reapply from scratch, paying the fees all over again, having to go through the board again.

In summer 2013, we extended the deadline for all permits until the end of December 2013. Now this was recently extended again until March 2015.

This is being done to incentivise the building industry and developers – as well as individuals.

How many properties does this affect?

Mepa does not have a database of pending applications as each case could be at any stage of development or might have not even started.

A recent decision by the Mepa board about a winery at Bidnija implies that an outline development permit does not give an automatic right to a full development permit...

Until now it was always the practice that if you have an outline permit, you have an automatic right to get a full development permit in accordance with the parameters established at outline stage. But the board recently took a decision which changed this.

However, it is important to understand the context of this case. The developer’s application for an outline permit was turned down but he won his appeal. When the project was then submitted to the board for a full development permit, the board voted against it.

The original board refused the winery as it did not respect the policies at the time. Even though the appeal was won, this board was faced with the same proposal and the same conditions – and it felt that the original refusal was justified since the policies were still in force.

Each case has to be seen on its own merits and the particular context. It is not a blanket statement by the board.

Isn’t this a worrying precedent? People who have outline development permits would have made substantial investment in the site, the designs and so on... This is not a good thing for an investor!

Yes, you have to take into consideration that the outline development permit might not be automatic. The board there now is not the one that approved the outline development permit and it may see things differently.

It is a difficult situation.

The previous administration had suggested that there should no longer be outline development permits and that applicants should go straight for a full development permit. Is this the best option?

I think the situation could be resolved by having a development brief –which is not necessarily a permit in itself but a framework of the planning parameters on how the land can be developed – and you would then go on from there with near certainty that the brief would translate into a permit, even if there are changes to the parameters eventually approved by the board.

You could still have a situation where the board approves something that differs from the development brief though.

Mepa has now decided that a room built on top of a two-storey house in Sliema’s Rudolph Street will have to be demolished after all. What is going on?

When the case went before the Development Control Commission (DCC), they had the case officer’s report, which said that the structure would be allowed if the width of the street was more than 7.8m. The DCC asked the applicant’s architect to measure the street and it was reported as being 8.5m. So the DCC accepted this and said the construction was allowed. However, there was an outcry about the aesthetics of this room and when we checked the width of the street ourselves, we found that it was below what it required for that structure to go up.

And what has happened to the applicant’s architect who made the declaration?

We cannot do anything. It is up to the Kamra tal-Periti.

But if an architect gives you false information, is nothing going to done by Mepa?

I directed the Planning Directorate to sort out the situation with regards to the room, and to report the architect to the KTP, which will then have to take action as needed.

Had the road been wider, that room would have stayed there as that is what the policy says. So it is the policy which needs to be changed if we want to prevent such situations.

How do you see the construction industry going now? We have gone from 11,700 permits in 2012 to around 3,000. Has the sector stabilised? Is this the end of the building boom in Malta?

I do not think it is the end of the boom. We need to rethink our strategies, not necessarily Mepa on its own but also developers and individuals need to try to maximise our land and what we have. We are currently revising local plans and we have to think afresh.

We are also doing so, for example, with the floor area ratio and policy, where we are trying to go vertical instead of horizontal, giving up some of the land which is already developed and making it accessible to the public as open space to be enjoyed by the public.

Our first principle is that we do not extend any further outside the areas already in the local plans. But we still have a number of areas within the existing local plans that can still be developed.

People talk about 70,000 vacant properties – but many are below standard. Those have to be knocked down and rebuilt to a better standard.

There is a good interaction between Mepa and the developers, and we agree on a number of lines of action... but not on others

Our policy is to try to go for quality in design and quality in our built environment. We do not want to end up with below-standard properties that cannot be either rented out or sold.

There are also the forces of supply and demand – not only policy and local plans. Is there really demand?

There is still demand for new property. You still get people who want to buy their home or who want to buy land and develop it. The market is still vibrant – would you believe that there are over 200 developers who are members of the Malta Developers’ Association? And there must be others who are not in the association.

When you consider the size of the island, and the size of the areas that can be developed, I think there is probably a surplus of developers.

There is a good interaction between Mepa and the developers, and we agree on a number of lines of action... but not on others.

We also need to respect the NGOs’ line of thought which at times makes sense and, at other times, does not. There has to be a balance between development and the environment.

I would definitely say that we as Mepa make mistakes. We cannot hide behind that. Some are the result of decisions taken in the past, perhaps by other boards, perhaps based on policies which were put in place by previous administrations.

I believe we are losing some of our architectural identity. For example, the 2006 policy allowing people to build another storey with a penthouse on top meant we lost a lot of our two-storey houses with wooden balconies. There are still some areas and streets with such houses which I think we should preserve. Or if we have to allow some development in those areas, we should respect the aesthetics of that row of houses and not necessarily build another storey or two on the current alignment – but at least have a setback.

One of the decisions taken was to do with Urban Conservation Areas (UCA), where we practically reduced our fees to zero for applications for rehabilitation of residences and in scheduled buildings. There are quite a number of areas that could be addressed here.

Over the past few weeks, we also looked at the interpretation of policies with regard to the extent to which you can build in gardens, to preserve garden enclaves within urban development. We are trying to restrict the development to not more than 30m and to leave the gardens as they are. That is, in my opinion, a positive move.

These are all the carrots. What about the sticks? What about enforcement?

I would say that we issued quite a good number of enforcement orders on properties...

The problem has never been issuing the enforcement order but actually getting them enforced and seeing the wrongs put right...

There are now daily fines... We issued €132,000 worth since they were introduced in November 2012. Don’t forget that this only applies to developments since then and cannot be applied retrospectively.

The enforcement on properties before then can only be tackled by direct action, which we have to pay for and then try to recoup the costs from the developer.

We set up a small unit which is looking at these cases and trying to collect about €800,000 due for direct actions (as at March 2013). So far, we have managed to collect €50,000. It is not much but it is a start.

You have to research what the money was due for, and there may be many that are time prescribed.

Do not forget that daily fines accumulate very quickly and it is the interest of those who are incurring them to sort the situation out as soon as possible.

There was a time when the pending caseload ran into the thousands...

It now stands at around 1,697, one of the lowest it has been in a long time. It will never go much below 1,500 because there are always going to be ones in process.

It has been coming down steadily for a few years. Of course, there are fewer new applications, but also we have a self-imposed deadline since 2010 for decisions within 12 weeks and 26 weeks for small and major projects respectively. We are meeting that target.