Permit for massive Swieqi construction project revoked, leaving site unfinished

Permits to turn the former Halland Hotel in Swieqi into a 10-storey residential complex, which is already partially completed, have been revoked by a court.

The permits were revoked on Friday after the Court of Appeal found that the Planning Authority and Environmental and Planning Review Tribunal had acted “arbitrarily”.

The court found the authorities had applied one policy to the site while disregarding another equally applicable one.

The half-built structure stands tall at Ibraġ fronting Wied Għomor. Halland Developments Ltd, which forms part of Tumas Group, was granted a permit to replace the hotel at the end of 2018 (PA 2479/16).

The company later filed another to amend the original permit, which was also approved in 2022 (PA 6961/20).

Meanwhile, a group of residents appealed both permits with the EPRT but lost both cases on July 17, 2025.

Subsequently, the Swieqi and San Ġwann local councils, architect Joe Cachia Fearne and the Tal-Ibraġġ Complex Association filed an appeal against the Tribunal’s decision regarding the first permit on August 4, 2025.

Cachia Fearne and Tal-Ibraġġ Complex Association also filed an appeal on the same date against the Tribunal’s decision on the second permit.

Conflicting maps

In its judgment, the court noted that the site is covered by two contradictory policy maps: Map SW2, which restricts development on the site to detached or semi-detached dwellings with a maximum height of two storeys, and Map SW4, which says developments must retain the existing building height.

The hotel was 25.69 metres high, far exceeding the two-storey limit.

Both the PA and the tribunal focused on the latter policy to justify granting the permit, the court said, dismissing the former policy.

Workers spotted at the project, on the day the judgement revoking its permit was handed out. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

This decision created “an extremely anomalous situation,” the court said, as the PA chose to follow a certain policy which fit the application while disregarding the two-storey height limitation.

'Arbitrary' use of policies

The court stressed that policies cannot be used selectively and in an ad hoc manner.

“Such an exercise is arbitrary in nature and does not appear to have been carried out in accordance with the requirements of the planning law.”

“This is a case where the authority chose between policies that undoubtedly applied equally to the case, with the consequence that its decision inevitably breached some of those applicable policies,” the court said.

To comply with the law, the PA should have resolved this conflict within the local plans and not chosen one policy over another, it said. 

The court revoked the main permit to construct the residential block. The court also issued another judgment on the same day that the second permit should also be revoked for the same reasoning.

Times of Malta revealed in 2019 that 17 Black owner Yorgen Fenech had met Planning Authority executive chairman Johann Buttigieg to discuss the project’s redesign.