Siġġiewi local council will appeal against the descheduling of an area that used to form part of a buffer zone around Għar il-Kbir archaeological site.
The council held an emergency meeting yesterday afternoon in view of today’s appeal hearing against the refusal of a planning application to build a batching plant nearby. The plans submitted to Mepa for the batching plant include the buffer zone area that was descheduled last Friday.
The council decided to ask the Environment and Planning Tribunal to suspend the application process until a decision on its appeal against the descheduling had been taken.
It also asked for an urgent meeting with Planning Parliamentary Secretary Michael Falzon, who approved the descheduling.
The area indicated for the batching plant in planning application PA 2057/08 falls within a scheduled area of archaeological importance, ix-Xagħra ta’ Għar il-Kbir, a Class A archaeological site. Caves there were occupied by a community of troglodytes until the early British period.
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.
No consultations were carried out during the processing of the application
According to Mepa rules, no application on the site can be approved without either sanctioning the illegality or reversing the site to its original state.
The case officer report, drawn up by Johann Buttigieg, who today is Mepa’s CEO, said no consultations were carried out during the processing of the application as the proposal was “objectionable in principle”.
The application was refused on February 24, 2011, and an appeal was submitted in March. No appeal sessions were held between January 2012 and November 2014.
During a site visit by the Tribunal last March, “the scheduling and the limits of the scheduling in the area” were identified as the main issues. On June 2, the Tribunal adjourned for today for final submissions prior to a decision.
A Mepa spokesman said the owner commissioned a “number of scientific studies” to remove the scheduling and that it carried out a “technical evaluation” before sending its recommendation to the government.
The Times of Malta asked for a copy of the studies under the Aarhus Convention, however, no reply had been received at the time of writing.