The Planning Authority has stated its intention to reject an application for a five-floor guesthouse in Wied Għomor, on a site originally occupied by a 60-square-metre store.

The site, located outside development zones on the valley side of the protected Wied Għomor in St Julian’s, currently consists of a dilapidated building and abuts a garage and a two-storey building.

A permit for a villa and pool on site was approved in 2015 but has not yet been built, and the developer sought permission to build a larger guesthouse instead.

The application had been recommended for approval, but during a hearing today, the Planning Commission ruled that the proposal went far beyond what had been approved, introducing a whole new block in the sensitive area, and could not be accepted. 

Read: Five-storey guesthouse in Wied Għomor should be denied permit - Front Ħarsien ODZ

The case was deferred, in line with procedure, for conditions to be drawn up before a formal decision.

Objectors who attended the hearing – including environmental groups and the local councils of Swieqi and St Julian’s, which have consistently opposed development in Wied Għomor – argued that the application went against conditions in the original permit and that the effect of five floors (three above street level) on the valley had not been properly considered.

St Julian’s deputy mayor Albert Buttigieg described the project as “overkill” and said it would continue to turn the locality into a “slum area”.

The Swieiqi council argued that the proposal was “totally alien in terms of bulk, form, textures and scale to the rural quality of the context” and said the “grabbing of more protected ODZ land by developers should not be tolerated”.

The developer said during the hearing he was ready to revise the design and introduce terracing to minimise the impact on the valley, but this was not enough to sway the board.

The board’s decision follows the objections of the ERA, which warned that the additional height and massing was likely to visually intrude onto Wied Għomor, and that approval would set a precedent for similar development on existing vacant plots within this area.

This is the latest of several applications in Wied Għomor, a scheduled area of ecological and scientific importance, to be decided in recent weeks. The Environment and Planning Review Tribunal rejected a proposal for a 133-room retirement home in the valley on March 2, while the PA approved a smallscale residential development in another part of the valley one week later.