4.20pm Update - FAA files legal protest

A Planning Board decision to sanction illegal Portomaso works dating back to 1999 effectively nullified the Public Domain Act that came into force last week, an environmental group has charged. 

Flimkien Ghal Ambjent Ahjar filed a legal protest against the decision, saying it "puts private gain before public interest" and created a dangerous precedent for "other infringements of the public domain." 

The Planning Board this morning announced that it would be sanctioning works carried out in 1999 in and around Portomaso's beach club and marina area. These included boathouses and stores. 

In its decision, the Board said that it considered the sanctioned works to not have negatively impacted the surrounding area and to still "respect the general thrust" of the area's local planning policy. The PA's Planning Directorate had concluded along similar lines, it noted.

The boathouses for which sanctioning was being sought, it said, did not exceed the height of the existing sea-wall, and stores were completely below the beach club's level, meaning "they do not create a visual impact in the overall context," the PA said. 

But according to the FAA, the decision made little sense. "FAA cannot understand how the [Planning Authority] case officer could have recommended the application for approval when [the] Environment Planning Directorate had expressed its concern on 'the encroachment on the coast' and the 'obliteration of the buffer zone' between the pillbox and the clubhouse," the group said in a statement. 

They noted that the Board had stuck to its recommendation to approve even after the Public Domain Act came into force. Among other things, the Act classifies the coastline as reserved for public access. 

In their statement, FAA said that PA Chairman Vince Cassar had dismissed these concerns by claiming that the Portomaso coastline being assessed had not been "specifically designated".

Portomaso's lighthouse is also set to be demolished and a bigger one built in its stead, the Board announced in the same decision.