Living in Lapsi Street, St Julian’s for the last few months has been a nightmare. Imagine waking up every morning, Saturdays included, to the bone-jarring drilling of excavation machinery from 7.30am to 5.30 pm, and it seems like this is only the beginning. The residents of this once picturesque street in one of the loveliest locations of the island cannot seem to live in peace.

Uncontrolled development is not only causing untold stress to the remaining residents of this once lovely street, but we feel totally betrayed and impotent, as far as our civil rights are concerned. Just as worryingly, all this development is destroying our Maltese heritage for good. The typically Maltese streetscape is being systematically eroded by ugly apartments.

In Lapsi Street we still have a row of four identical 19th century townhouses with wooden balconies and beautiful back gardens with trees that act as indispensable green lungs in this over-polluted area. An application to demolish and replace one of these houses with a modern block of flats was recently submitted to Mepa. The style in which this block of flats is being proposed is completely alien to the existing style and uniformity of these four existing houses.

Are we insane? Haven’t we ruined enough by replacing period houses with soulless blocks of tiny apartments, of which 40,000 are empty all over the island?

I am not against development as long as it is done sensibly and is sensitive to the environment and heritage of the locality, as is stated clearly in the 2006 North Harbour Local Plan. I hope it is not too late to save what precious little is left, but we must act now. Let us at least hold on to the original façades, and let us not destroy our precious gardens.