A family are claiming they are being made to disobey the law by the planning authority, which stopped them from garaging their buses at night.

Dominic, Felicia, Carmelo and Rita Borg of Mellieha filed a judicial protest this morning accusing the authority of sealing parts of the garages they have been using since 1980 and claimed that since then, one of their buses was vandalised.

The Borg family said that every evening they used to have to check who the cars parked opposite belonged to and ask for these to be temporarily moved so that they could garage their buses for the night.

The neighbours complained to Mepa, which ordered them to stop using their garage, forcing them to leave their vehicles out at night.

This, the family claimed, which was in breach of the law which said that buses had to be garaged at night.

The family claimed that a Mepa official turned up on their door step last week and sealed off parts of their garages.

The family applied to the authority’s appeals board to again start using their garages but the application was still pending, they said.

They are holding the authority responsible for any damages they might suffer because of vandalism. They threatened further legal action if the situation was not rectified.