The Environment and Resources Authority’s mission is “to safeguard the environment for a sustainable quality of life”. The Planning Authority’s is that of “making Malta and Gozo a more pleasant and desirable place to live in”. Both regulators, which are so crucial to the daily well-being of all Maltese citizens, are failing abysmally in their objectives.
The recent decision on high-rise buildings at Sliema and Mrieħel, as well as other proposed developments in Sliema, raises the spectre of the country having just one dominant PA whose diktat is sheepishly followed by the ERA.
At the pivotal planning decision on high-rise buildings at Mrieħel and Tignè, the ERA chairman was notable by his absence (he was reportedly ‘indisposed’). To compound this, following a decision that will have a massive environmental impact on Malta’s heritage landscape and, in the case of the grotesque Townsquare project, will affect the quality of life through noise, pollution and traffic levels of thousands of Sliema residents, the ERA has yet to decide whether it will appeal the PA’s decision.
In parallel, it has transpired that the threat to Sliema’s remaining heritage architecture is being renewed with a surge of new applications to demolish traditional townhouses in favour of apartment blocks or guesthouses. Experts have rightly expressed concern that the once-elegant architectural variety of Sliema, which is home to a number of styles unique in Malta, is under threat of obliteration.
What is happening in Sliema – where the destruction of that once most elegant seaside town is proceeding at an even greater pace than elsewhere in Malta – is as much an environmental as a planning disaster. The aesthetics of the town and the disruption to citizens’ quality of life through psychological stress, construction noise, traffic pollution and infrastructure degradation should also be of concern to the ERA whose mission statement is primarily concerned with achieving “a sustainable quality of life”.
To undermine public trust in the workings of these two key authorities further, it has emerged that there are loopholes in the government’s rural policy which permit the redevelopment of collapsed buildings into new residences outside the development zone (ODZ) if developers present proof that the ruins were once used as a residence.
For example, a pile of rubble in a field in Żabbar has been converted into a two-storey dwelling on the premise that a voter was registered at that address in the 1947 electoral register. The situation is Kafkaesque and is clearly an abuse of planning regulations, which both the PA and the ERA – for different reasons – should have resisted straightway.
But rather than leading the charge against this anomaly, the ERA, which had initially rightly objected to any encroachment on the rural environment, which one would suppose it is primarily there to protect, has stated it has no intention of appealing the decision. Other similar cases of abuse under this extraordinary “policy” have been allowed at Mġarr, Rabat and presumably elsewhere.
It is difficult to comprehend how a regulator that has been set up ostensibly to protect the environment from the bulldozers of construction developers and to act as a counterweight to the pro-developer depredations of the PA can behave in such a supine manner, not just in this case, but, apparently, in most recent cases that have come to light.
The bottom line is the environment taking second place to high-rise buildings, the wholesale uglification of Sliema, attacks on people’s quality of life, and continued encroachment on precious ODZ.
Who will guard the guards?