The Planning Authority is expected to reject a developer’s attempts to slice a massive proposed residential project in Luqa into five separate applications to evade the need of environmental studies, this newspaper was told.
PA board member Ryan Callus, who represents the Opposition, said he had raised the issue in an informal board meeting after an outcry by the environmental organisations and the Luqa local council.
The planning watchdog agreed that the five applications, which all refer to a single development on 8,700 square metres of fields close to the Luqa State primary school, should be processed together and a decision taken on the basis of the whole project, he said.
“We cannot allow piecemeal planning,” he added. “We have to assess the impact that each application will have on the other and address the project holistically.”
The five applications, submitted by GAP Ltd., collectively seek permission to build a complex of 35 maisonettes, 187 apartments and 47 penthouses.
A development of such scale would typically require the developer to commission an environmental impact assessment and abide by the conditions imposed by the local plans, obliging the applicant to provide open and communal spaces as well as amenities. But by spreading the project over five separate applications, none of which reach the threshold of a “major development” on their own, these requirements would have been evaded.
The first of the applications, being assessed by the PA, is scheduled to be heard on April 3.
Two of the five applications are listed on the PA server as having been withdrawn by the applicant.
The Luqa council and eNGO Flimkien Għal Ambjent Aħjar have both called on the PA to insist the applications are withdrawn and resubmitted as one major development. They have also raised concerns about the merits of the project itself.
“This development will result in a series of large-scale dormitories void of the character and facilities necessary for the creation of quality communities,” the FAA said. “This abusive continuation of bad planning practice has already ruined the distinctness of many of our towns and villages and must not be allowed to continue,” it insisted.
Colin Zammit, the architect behind the project, has strongly denied any attempt was made to circumvent planning policies and insisted the sites covered by the different applications were all separated by schemed roads, such that a single combined application would not have been possible.
“Indeed, the FAA’s position is false and technically incorrect,” he told this newspaper last week. “Had I applied on one site, PA would have sent me everything back, having ignored the schemed roads,” Mr Zammit said.
A satellite view of the planned development.