Malta is a great and unique tourism package. It offers heritage, cuisine, weather, enhanced by the openness and relaxed friendliness of inhabitants. Importantly, visitors can leave the island satisfied with their experience and word of mouth is always the best advert. After my return from over 40 years ago, there is a lot to like and love.

However, I believe this wonderful treasure is being tainted by the same mistakes other countries invariably seem to make. The main one being that of overdevelopment.

I also believe that most of the new stock is totally brutal and insensitive to the references offered by Malta's wonderful building heritage.

There are some fine examples, but these are rare. Delicate vistas have been compromised by this approach. Reading the news leaves me wondering if the Malta Environment and Planning Authority has real or false teeth in these matters.

I refer to City Gate: In developing the Royal Theatre, Malta's fathers expressed the building art and decoration of the time. I am of the school that society should express the art and architecture of the day. After all, when visitors to Malta come 50 years from now to look at Valletta, Renzo Piano's architecture will look as relevant and sensitive as anything else in Valletta.

One will note that works to Mdina carried out during the Knights' tenure reflect the baroque style of that day. Nobody complains that the baroque style can, in some minds, conflict with the ambient and less decorative style of the mediaeval Mdina. This is a cultural difference of nearly half a millennium. Furthermore, most theatres of antiquity and some recent ones, are open-air facilities. Who can forget the three tenors in Rome's baths of Caracalla? The democratic process or perceived lack of it apropos the final Piano applications as expressed in The Times on April 13 may be another issue. But I cannot believe that Mr Piano will misrepresent the site and the Maltese people.

In the same vein, Malta is being eaten and chocked by the private vehicle. There seems to be a needless excess of private cars, given the excellent coverage by public transport. Maybe public transport should be free to the locals and tourists charged a transport use levy. This will make public transport even more efficient.

The understandably constrained road infrastructure seems to bring out the worst driving practices in the local motorist. As in Palermo, or similar places elsewhere, driving is best left to the locals.

There is a long way to go in Malta's tourism journey as international travel becomes easier and the tourist more particular. Please do not neutralise this great heritage to make it look like any other resort location. There are far too many of them in this shrinking world.

I started to write this letter some weeks back and lo and behold articles in a similar vein appear in The Times, and in two locations in a cookbook I purchased dedicated to Malta's culinary heritage there are stinging attacks on the same subject. Although I am a visitor, I was born here and hope this gives me the ability to contribute to these debates.

The resolution of some of the issues of building overdevelopment and traffic congested roadways may require some tough decisions, now. Not to act may push the issue into a watershed situation in the future.