With a rate of 3,000 building applications per year the planning situation has become “confusing and even alarming”.
Although this statement sounds like an environmental group’s lament on today’s building spree it is not... it was penned in a 1963 Cabinet memo.
It was a time when the hotel industry was starting to take root, Malta was moving towards industrialisation and large areas were being urbanised as a building boom kicked off.
But unlike today, the concern at the time was not environmental but the judicious use of land for development purposes. The memo spelt out the concern clearly: “A wrong decision now, may therefore greatly increase the cost of, or entirely prevent, some desirable or essential use later on.” In that period planning laws did not exist as they do today and building permits were regulated through archaic provisions in the Code of Police Laws and a Planning Area Permits Board.
The Borg Olivier administration was considering new legislation that took a long-term view of “town and country planning”.
The effort may have very well been the first attempt at creating some form of planning legislation.
The Cabinet meeting held in August 1963 that analysed the memorandum called for a comparative study of planning laws in various countries before proceeding with draft legislation.
The memo, which was penned eight months earlier, asked ministers to agree with the engagement of a reputable firm of town planning consultants to draw up a master plan for Malta and Gozo. The plan had to cater for development over the next 25 years.
The memo lamented that land use planning had been carried out in “a piecemeal” way dictated by the demand for building permits. This meant there was “no co-relation between one plan and another” and key plans kept changing.
Cabinet memos in subsequent years showed that ministers retained the final say on PAPB decisions, at least on major projects like hotels.
It was only in 1970 that the Town and Country Planning Act was passed by the Borg Olivier Administration.
But it was revoked by a Labour government some eight years later without it ever having had the force of law. It was replaced by the Building Development Areas Act with the power to grant building permits all over Malta.
ksansone@timesofmalta.com