The Lands Authority is not divulging information on a proposed development on virgin land in Mosta.
The authority announced, on March 3, a public consultation for a proposal to set planning parameters for the development of a 36,000-square-metre site in an area known as Ta’ Mellu, a part of which is government-owned.
However, it remains unclear what the public is actually being consulted on.
A notice published in newspapers and displayed on site advised the public to visit the Lands Authority website for information, but the website contains only the same notice, and no additional information on what the proposal consists of.
Daily calls and e-mails from the Times of Malta for more than a week requesting details of the proposal all remained unacknowledged. A spokesman eventually advised this newspaper to submit an official request under the Freedom of Information Act.
Mosta mayor Keith Cassar confirmed that the local council had similarly tried and failed to obtain any information from the authority.
Although the notice makes reference to a scheduled public meeting on March 16, it is unclear whether the public had any access to information either before or after this meeting.
Residents signed a petition objecting to the plans
Lands Authority CEO Carlo Mifsud was asked whether he felt the public had been given adequate opportunity to participate in the consultation, given the seeming impossibility of obtaining any information. However, he did not respond.
The Ta’ Mellu site was included in the development zone in the 2006 rationalisation exercise but a planning control application is still required to set the parameters for any future development.
An application was submitted in 2013 that would have zoned the area primarily for terraced housing, with a height limitation of three storeys and a semi-basement, with the possibility of penthouses.
The proposal would have left roughly 2,000 square metres of open space. The application was last updated in 2016 and it is not clear if the Lands Authority’s public consultation refers to the same proposal.
When it was submitted, some 50 neighbouring residents signed a petition objecting to the plans, which they said were incompatible with a building environment that currently consists of two-storey terraced houses and one-storey properties.
Residents also argued that the adjacent Antonio Miruzzi Street was already not wide enough for the existing traffic flow, and would not be able to cope with that increased traffic that would be generated by intensive development nearby.