I fully agree with the contents of Alfred Vella‘s letter (July 16) regarding the article under the heading Court Order Sparks Need For Action Plan (July 12), in which the chairman of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority was reported as saying among other things that “interpretation and application of policies varied over time and across boards...”

Although I completely disagree with the chairman’s statement, I can say that at least, and at last, he provided me with an answer for something that has been baffling me for many years.

I have always wondered why some property developers get away with obvious and outright contraventions to established building laws and policies.

I am referring in particular to the construction of washrooms and penthouses on existing buildings.

Although building laws and policies for these constructions existed for many years, one has only to look around to see how these constructions have multiplied, the vast majority of them in stark contrast with established policies.

Most of them have certainly been built either without Mepa permission (and Mepa never bothered to enforce its authority to stop them in time) or under some board’s (Mepa’s) interpretation of a policy and therefore got away with it. I suppose that one of these interpretations in the last few years has been that if the guy next door built something not necessarily fully conforming to the law and got away with it and Mepa did not take any action, then I can build the same (or even worse) because, most probably, I will also get away with it.

No wonder the environments of most of our seaside towns and villages have become so ugly, cramped and suffocating. This is the result one obtains when established policies are left to be decided upon by someone’s interpretation.