The Planning Authority is moving quickly to remove billboards that are not in line with its new regulations, Planning Parliamentary Secretary Deborah Schembri told the Times of Malta.

At least 44 billboards were targeted by the authority’s enforcement section this week, with officers removing 12 non-compliant signs on Tuesday alone, she said.

The rest of the billboards that did not abide by the new regulations would be removed by their owners in the coming days, Dr Schembri added.

Hundreds of billboards have been erected all over Malta in recent months, turning the island’s streets into a busy eyesore. Under the new regulations, however, all billboards have to be registered with Transport Malta and will cost a yearly licence of €1,500.

Meanwhile, a planning authority spokesman confirmed that efforts to address the sprawl of billboards had been stepped up.

There should not be any legal problems regarding this issue

The spokesman said that “in view of the urgency to deal with the billboard issue”, the authority had not been issuing daily fines as part of its cease and desist orders. Instead, enforcement officers had started removing the billboards and sending owners the bill.

Not all owners have taken to the new regulations, however. Businessman Joe Caruana Curran filed a warrant of prohibitory injunction yesterday against the authorities, stopping them from removing signage he owned. His appeal has been provisionally upheld by the courts.

The new legislation has also stirred political controversy, as it imposed commercial rates on political parties too. The Nationalist Party has objected to the move, insisting the fees were too high and effectively muzzled it from being able to spread its political message.

A court this week upheld a warrant of prohibitory injunction filed by the PN against the new regulations, stopping the authorities from removing their billboards pending legal proceedings.

A PN spokesman said the regulations had been introduced with such haste that the previous regulations had not been repealed until this was flagged in court.

Asked about this, Dr Schembri denied the regulations had been introduced in a hurry, insisting work on the legal amendments had started several years ago, “way before I became a parliamentary secretary”. She said the authorities had been informed that the current legislation automatically overrode the previous ones, without the need for these to be repealed.

“There should not be any legal problems regarding this issue,” she said.

Meanwhile, Dr Schembri said the government would abide by the court ruling and desist from enforcing the removal of “the illegal billboards erected by the PN”.

This, however, did not mean the new regulations’ validity was not intact, she said.