The House Environment and Development Planning Committee has agreed on a list of recommendations that it will be making to Parliament with regards to a second Paceville master plan, despite the fact that information requested from the Planning Authority by the Opposition is still outstanding.
One of the major shortcomings identified in the first plan was the fact that the legal weighting that it would have was unclear, the committee agreed. Although the document was presented as a master plan, Mott MacDonald, who drew it up, said that they had been commissioned to draft a development framework.
It was also unclear to residents how expropriations would be valued, and the next draft of the plan should be clear on this point.
The government and the Opposition also agreed that the next draft of the plan should provide a level playing field for all those with an interest in the area, whilst avoiding the sacrificing of public and private property for select private interests.
Where possible, government land should be used for open space, and all development of high-rise buildings should be in terms of the Strategic Plan for the Environment and Development and the current policy on Floor Area Ratio.
There should also be the assurance that any public land sold by the government would be sold at market rates, and not for less. Should a future draft of the plan be approved, a corporation should be established to manage its execution.
The committee agreed that the land reclamation proposed in the plan was not justified, and Charles Buhagiar (PL) said that there should be a national policy on land reclamation before any such reclamation was considered.
Where necessary infrastructural development was concerned, it should be carried out before the actual implementation of the rest of the plan, funded in part by planning gains and income from other concessions.
Marthese Portelli (PN) said that, when the second draft of the plan came before the committee for evaluation, it was imperative that all pertinent information be available from the beginning. Furthermore, and for various reasons, it was not Mott Macdonald who should be approached to revise the plan.
Subsequent versions of the plan should be free of all conflicts of interest, and all interested parties should be considered equally.
It was essential, she said, that stakeholders be extensively consulted. These included residents and their associations, the local councils of the surrounding localities, small businesses and other operators in the area, eNGOs, and the developers themselves.
Local councils should also be helped to cope with the infrastructural costs that development would have on their localities.
The committee endorsed PA chairman Johann Buttigieg’s recommendation that planning applications should be evaluated in terms of current policy until the master plan was finalised and adopted.