One of the effects of the planning authority reform, which has still not become law, was a torrent of applications filed by developers who feared policies would change as a result, the authority's top official said yesterday. Malta Environment and Planning Authority chairman Austin Walker said since the discussion on reform had kicked off last year, the authority had been inundated by applications that were filed because of rumours doing the rounds.

"There were rumours Mepa would ban penthouses and we received a rush of applications for penthouses; there were rumours we would curb building height limits and we received a rush of applications for new storeys," Mr Walker said during a briefing for journalists.

He said one of the biggest headaches for Mepa would be to tackle the backlog of pending applications once the reform was in place. The Prime Minister wanted pending applications to be decided in three years, he added, but Parliamentary Secretary Mario de Marco had set a more ambitious target of one year.

"It is a major headache and one year does seem difficult," Mr Walker acknowledged. Pending applications would have to be treated by the new structures but it had still not been decided whether they would be judged on the basis of amended policy or the policy that existed when they were filed.

Mr Walker said the reform was intended to put time limits on when applications were decided. A four-week pre-screening process would enable planning applications to be processed at a faster pace later on since developers would knew exactly what was expected of them.

This process would lead to the removal of reconsiderations, which would be narrowed down to those conditions that did not impact the scope of the original permit, such as the amount of money identified as planning gain.