A decision on a controversial application for a new batching plant in Siġġiewi was put off yesterday after developers failed to turn up and the local council asked for a delay.

The Siġġiewi local council informed Mepa’s Environment and Planning Tribunal that since it would be challenging the recent descheduling of the area where the batching plant was planned, it would be better if the appeal was heard when the decision on its challenge was made. The request was upheld.

The hearing was put off until December.

The proposed batching plant lies in an ecologically – and archaeologically – sensitive area.

The area includes caves that were occupied by a community of troglodytes until the early British period.

The plant application was refused in 2011 but an appeal was launched.

Just days before the appeal was to be heard yesterday, Mepa descheduled the area, removing its protection from any sort of development.

Mepa said the proposed batching plant would be located 400 metres north of the recently descheduled area, insisting the two cases were not connected.

The site plan submitted with the batching plant application included the area that recently had its protection removed.

Planning Parliamentary Secretary Michael Falzon, who endorsed the removal of the land from the list of scheduled property, told the Times of Malta he had never met the applicants on this issue.

An enforcement order was issued in 1997 following illegal excavation in the descheduled area.

The case officer report said there was no request to regularise the infringement.

Following the refusal of the permit, visits by the tribunal hearing the appeal last March agreed that “the scheduling and the limits of the scheduling in the area” were to be identified as the main issue.