The Malta Chamber of Planners has called for the Paceville master plan to be completely scrapped and redrawn from scratch, lambasting it as “ill-conceived, biased and contradictory”.

In a damning eight-page statement, planners described the controversial plan as a publicly-funded “real estate marketing stunt”, motivated by private interests and failing to take into account the needs of the community and the safeguarding of urban and natural environments.

“This poorly structured plan seems to try to bore the reader with hundreds of pages of meaningless, unsubstantiated buzz words, portrays a gloomy picture of the current situation, to a point of denigrating the local community and businesses that built the strength of Paceville, and shows no real understanding, nor attempts to address the issues,” the chamber said.

“It produces a laughable choice of scenarios and options, exhibits poor grasp of land fragmentation, legal obligation and rights, costings and projections, and contradicts itself so many times that it is difficult to keep track.  It is, however, principally unable to depart from obsessively trying to justify the existence of the nine high-rise development sites.”

The master plan – which envisions a number of high-rise buildings, new infrastructure, a vast promenade at St George’s Bay and new public spaces – has drawn severe criticism from diverse quarters since being published for public consultation by the Planning Authority in September. It has also been plagued by claims of conflict of interest surrounding British consultants Mott MacDonald.

PA CEO Johann Buttigieg has insisted the published plan represents only a first draft, with a new version expected around April or May next year.

But the Chamber of Planners said yesterday the document would be “impossible to tweak” because its starting point was the needs of nine privileged development sites, rather than proposing planning policies and actions to benefit the common good.

Among the targets of the Chamber’s wide-ranging criticism are the underestimation of traffic generation and parking demand, the impact on neighbouring localities, and the lack of proper protection for the environment and historic sites.

It also warned that the promised public spaces could lag behind the new developments due to complications surrounding required expropriations.

“It is very evident that only the developers’ wants and not the community’s needs were considered in this document, while the rest is collateral, intended to embellish the environment between the nine sites, and any positives that the community gets are almost purely coincidental,” the Chamber said.

Meanwhile, Din L-Art Ħelwa also took aim at the master plan for lacking transparency and furthering direct financial interests.

The NGO questioned how Paceville was prioritised for a master plan exercise, at a cost footed by the taxpayer, when more important sites in Malta were clearly in dire need of regeneration. Good governance advocated that areas in need of regeneration were targeted for study before addressing commercial private interests, Din L-Art Ħelwa said.