The only amendments to the strategic plan that will guide development until 2020 were driven by the government, despite two public consultation processes, NGOs have told Times of Malta.
Din l-Art Ħelwa said extensive feedback provided by NGOs during two consultation processes – one in 2012 and one last year – did not lead to any changes to the plan. The only changes reflected government intentions, such as the inclusion of a reference to land reclamation.
The environmental organisation made the point following a parliamentary committee meeting on Wednesday to discuss the Strategic Plan for Environment and Development, in which chairwoman and Labour MP Marlene Farrugia invited NGOs to make their submissions.
Dr Farrugia said it was clear the consultation that had taken place was “a fake one”.
A heated debate followed, as Labour MP Deborah Schembri objected to the NGO submissions, saying the organisations should have made their proposals during the consultation period.
The consultation that took place was a fake one
She said this was creating “an ugly precedent”, but Dr Farrugia countered that she was determined the committee she chaired would widen democracy.
Mepa is responsible for handling the consultation process. The normal practice is for it to issue a document with a summary of all submissions received during both consultation periods, together with its answers explaining how these submissions were taken into consideration or discarded, and giving reasons for each decision.
This has not been done.
Mepa told Times of Malta “public representations with their respective responses will be published once the plan is approved”. It did not address further questions on why NGO feedback was not incorporated into the plan.
Nationalist Party spokesman on planning Ryan Callus strongly condemned Dr Schembri’s “attempt to censor views” during the Wednesday meeting, saying this was not the way politics should be done in a democratic country.
“NGOs had a right to be there, and the reason they were was that their views were ignored. Parliament is there to safeguard citizens’ voice. Mepa did not do its job,” he said.
One of the main points the NGOs raised was that the strategic plan did not even clarify which authority would be responsible for its implementation once Mepa was split into separate planning and environment units. There was no answer during the meeting.
Also, changes to the strategic plan will give the planning authority more freedom to do as it pleases if a vacuum in planning policies created until its implementation is not addressed, according to the NGOs.
The SPED is supposed to replace the Structure Plan – the mother of all planning policies. Existing Local Plans constantly refer to Structure Plan policies, but the government has decided to leave such policies out of the SPED and eventually include them in the new Local Plans instead.
This means that once the SPED is approved, there will be no detailed policies for architects to follow until the new Local Plans are in place, which will probably not be before next year. It is feared that this will create a vacuum, giving the planning authority room to fill that gap with decisions on a case-by-case basis.
Din l-Art Ħelwa is suggesting that either a transition clause be introduced to cover the interim period or the new strategic and local plans be brought into force simultaneously, as they are interdependent.
Friends of the Earth (Malta) stressed the need for one amendment to the SPED: that there be no development in outside development zones.