A bus owning family took legal action yesterday after the planning authority stopped them from garaging the vehicles at night following complaints by neighbours.

Dominic, Felicia, Carmelo and Rita Borg filed a judicial protest claiming that since the Malta Environment Planning Authority sealed off part of the garages, which have been in use since 1980, one of their buses had been vandalised.

The Borg family from Mellieħa said that every evening they would have to ask whoever had parked opposite their garage to move their car in order to enable them to park their buses safely inside their two garages at night.

However, they claimed the neighbours complained and Mepa ordered them to stop using their garages forcing them to leave their vehicles out at night. This was in clear breach of legal notice 149 of 2009, which lays down that all buses must be garaged at night.

They added that a Mepa official turned up on their doorstep unannounced on August 27 and sealed off a section of their garages.

Their application contesting this action was now before the Mepa appeal board but was still pending, they said.

The decision to stop the buses from being garaged was strange, they added, because there were many other residents in the same locality whose applications to park buses in their garages had been approved.

The family said the authority had not taken into consideration the Local Plan of 2006, which spoke of providing alternative parking areas, because Mepa was not allowing bus owners to park their buses in their garages.

The family held the authority responsible for any damages it might sustain due to vandalism and threatened further legal action if the situation was not rectified.

Lawyer Joanne Vella Cuschieri signed the protest.