Updated 8.25am
Four environmental NGOs have filed a judicial letter in court against Planning parliamentary Deborah Schembri accusing her of facilitating "a process of regularisation by stealth".
The NGOs argue that a recently-announced amnesty on building irregularities ditched "any pretence of transparency" and should be suspended.
The new scheme, valid for two years, allows buildings, or parts of buildings, not covered by a permit to be regularised as long as they are within development zones and do not constitute “an injury to amenity”, such as disturbing neighbours or the environment.
Dr Schembri has defended the amnesty by saying it draws a clear line in the sand for people to adhere to. "If we were to enforce every single illegality, we’d have to knock down three-quarters of the buildings in the country," the parliamentary secretary had told journalists.
The NGOs argued that 43 requests for regularisation had already been submitted to the Planning Authority within the amnesty's first week, "without the public having any means to access information about these cases."
They said that unlike previous building amnesties, this one also applied to abuse in Urban Conservation Areas and scheduled heritage buildings.
"The eNGOs hold Parliamentary Secretary Deborah Schembri responsible for this violation of universally-accepted principles of transparency, justice and good governance, and call on her to take all the necessary measures to remedy the situation," the statement read.
Rules governing the scheme do not require the Planning Authority to publish notifications of the applications it had received.
The NGOs called this a blatant breach of transparency. By not publishing these notifications, third parties were not given the chance to register with the PA any objections they may have.
Applications for regularisation are sent electronically directly to the PA by an architect acting on behalf of someone seeking to regularise a development, building or the illegal use of a property, the NGOs said.
This system is clearly geared towards preventing public scrutiny of the permits for the “so-called regularisation,” the NGOs said. They argued that planning and development laws state that third parties have the right to register their interest and object to any applications concerning developments.
Clear procedures were laid out in the laws to allow persons wishing to register an interest in a development or application for a development, they said.
The NGOs emphasised that this applied to all forms of applications.
The laws governing the regularisation scheme had created “a different class of applications”, that were not subject to the same level of scrutiny as other applications, the NGOs continued.
These applications would be decided upon “in obscurity” by people appointed by Dr Schembri and the Planning Authority, the NGOs said, and people would not be allowed to object or even know what was going on “behind their backs”.
They said media reports last Sunday indicated that seven complete applications had been received and a further 36 were being processed.
The NGOs claimed that if applications were decided upon or refused without the necessary public consultation, this would be a clear breach of planning and developments laws.
It called on the PA to stop processing applications until all the relevant documents about the applications had been made public.
The judicial protest was signed by lawyer Claire Bonello on behalf of Friends of the Earth (Malta), Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar, Din l-Art Ħelwa and the Ramblers Association.