After a wide-ranging consultation involving both internal and external stakeholders, we are now entering the implementation phase of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority reform process.

This is redefining Mepa's operations as well as setting out new ground rules for interaction between officials, applicants and their architects, objectors, consultants and other stakeholders during an environment or development application process. Our aim is to deliver a process that is more open and efficient.

The reform was established on principles based on people's concerns and aspirations, namely having more consistency in Mepa's decision-making processes, more efficiency in the way it operates, more accountability across its structures and more enforcement to ensure that rules are observed by everyone without exception.

The draft legislation published last Friday in the Government Gazette is one of the enabling tools to achieve our ultimate aims and fulfil people's expectations. The law is not the reform. The reform is the whole process which will eventually lead to Mepa's clients being given a better service, within pre-determined timeframes, with access to all information and an overall sense of fairness and impartiality.

The law provides a number of concrete ways in which the authority can regain respect. The processes aim to create the legal infrastructure in which applicants are assured of a decision - affirmative or negative - within a reasonable pre-determined time; and with the proper checks and balances to ensure transparency and efficiency at all times.

It is this that will make people trust Mepa and which is at the forefront of the reform process: putting the end-user, the public, at the centre of its entire operation.

Another objective is to address the imbalance between Mepa's environmental and planning roles. The issue of sustainable development is crucial and the legal recognition of an Environment Protection Directorate is a step in acknowledging that all the authority's activity also needs to be seen from the perspective of how it affects the environment.

We are currently analysing the list of additional resources that the Environment Directorate will need to carry out its functions more efficiently and effectively. Much has been done, and a lot more remains to be done - work that will lead to a more open, effective and efficient authority.

In the draft, we have extended the jurisdiction of the ex-Development Control Commissions and the Board of Appeal to cover environmental licensing. We will also set up an Enforcement Directorate to strengthen Mepa's ability to follow through on its decisions. More importantly, the new law is introducing tougher penalties, restricting the possibility of sanctioning of illegal developments, and restricting the possibility of suspending the effect of enforcement notices in order to deter illegal developments from taking place.

Other reform provisions which do not require legal backing are in the process of being implemented.

A code of ethics is being drawn up. It will be binding not just on members sitting on the Mepa board, tribunal and commissions, but also on all employees and consultants. A code of practice will also be drawn up to indicate what meetings can and cannot take place in the workings of the various directorates, commissions and boards.

We have set up a Policy Review Commission to examine existing Mepa policies and identify policies that are obsolete, conflicting, or not practical. This ad hoc commission will present its recommendations to government in the coming days.

We are working towards having a compendium of all applicable policies and a manual of case law so that better access to information is further enhanced, enabling more consistency in their interpretation by those applying the policies.

These are just a few of the initiatives being carried out to ensure that the reform is anything but cosmetic. Just a cursory glance at the draft Bill is enough to make one realise that its enactment will be affecting the way Mepa operates across the board.

British poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote, "Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming." We aim to prove this wrong. There is a balance which needs to be struck. This is the challenge we are facing. As a government we are doing our outmost not to be found wanting.

Dr de Marco is the Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism and is responsible for Mepa reform.