Letters sent by the planning authority to 3,500 people who have pending development applications, asking them to fork out up to €450 to cover printing costs, have now been withdrawn.

The authority last night said the bills were an “administrative error” and that it was currently evaluating its printing costs with the aim of drastically reducing them.

Earlier in the day, Labour MP Roderick Galdes, a Mepa employee who also represents his party on the board, had condemned the Malta Environment and Planning Authority for imposing a “new tax”. He described it as illegal as it needed to be covered by a legal notice.

He said the letter had been mailed to some 3,500 families, who were asked to pay between €125 and €450. He noted how, in the last line of the letter, the clients were told to pay up within 30 days or risk having their application suspended.

Mr Galdes said that at 10 p.m. on Tuesday, Mepa officials informed him that the letters were “an administrative mistake” and that they would be withdrawn. However, he questioned how no one had noticed that the letters were a mistake while they were being printed, signed and prepared for postage.

This issue was immediately addressed by Mepa yesterday, saying it would be sending refunds.

Later it issued a statement to clarify issues brought up on the services offered to its customers related to printing. The present tariffs, it said, do not include printing services and it was trying to reduce their cost.

It explained that it used to request applicants to submit six hard copies of their application for planning permits within the development scheme and eight for applications outside development zone. These documents included plans, site plans, application forms and photos.

In 2007, it had introduced an e-applications system and most architects made use of it to process their applications electronically, while the same was done for consultations. As a result, the authority reduced the submission of printed documents from six hard copies to four.

With the 2010 reform of Mepa, the e-applications system became mandatory and all planning applications had to be submitted digitally by the architect. Mepa is then responsible to officially print and file the applications.

It said it had reduced the printing process to only one copy of the application at its initial stage. Once the application process is finalised, three more copies of the approved documents are printed, two of them to be sent to the applicant and architect respectively. The hard copy is also forwarded to the enforcement officials and the approved copy filed within Mepa’s documents archive.