MEPA's failure to act

I write in support of Mr Albert Chetcuti's protest (The Sunday Times, July 6) about the orchestrated delays and injustices which the ordinary citizen has to suffer when he appeals to the Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA) for protection from illegal environmental abuse on his doorstep.

In 1994 we drew the attention of the Planning Authority (PA) to the abusive construction of large commercial garages in our residential zone under the guise of a residential garage (PA 2543/93). Stop and enforcement notice ECF 545/94 was issued and later ECF 972/99.

Up to now, these huge illegal commercial garages have remained in daily use in spite of the condition, imposed by the PA itself, that they could not be put into use until it issued a Final Compliance Certificate. This was effected by the usual ploy of submitting a sequence of applications (PA7162/95, PA3348/99, PA2591/02) intended solely to obstruct the implementation of the stop and enforcement notices. After eight years these applications were eventually refused but during all this time the garages remained and are still in illegal daily use.

MEPA is empowered to take prompt direct action to scotch these delaying tactics. It is also empowered to reject such applications forthwith when they are intended to prevent the implementation of stop and enforcement notices. But no such action was ever taken in this particular case.

We kept on enquiring why MEPA was not making use of its powers and finally we were informed in October 2002, through the office of the Ombudsman, that MEPA's enforcement officers were being instructed to check if the garages were in use and to seal them if they were found to be in use. Nothing ever happened in spite of our continuous protests. Finally, after four months, MEPA confessed that it has decided to defer direct action and it promised to contact us about the matter.

This MEPA contact, the Board Secretary, made reference to this builder's latest application (PA2591/02) as usual requesting that the garage door entrances be enlarged. According to the MEPA Website this application, like its predecessors, was refused by the Development Control Commission (DCC).

As registered objectors, we waited in vain to be notified about the hearing of the routine appeal for reconsideration of this refusal. To our great surprise Mr Francis Tabone hinted to us that MEPA had somehow already decided to reverse the refusal of the application by the DCC even though the applicant himself had not appealed from this decision. To our dismay, he also proposed to us that, in future, we should close our eyes when the garage entrances would be enlarged, twice yearly, even beyond the measurements which were going to be approved!

We could not believe this state of affairs and wrote to MEPA asking for elucidation about the true state of affairs regarding the latest application for enlarging the garage entrances. Predictably, we received no sort of reply.

To our greater surprise, when the Planning Appeals Board read out its decision about another and previous application, it concluded by granting the enlarged garage entrances which had been refused by the DCC and which had not been appealed from.

The policy document in question (DC 2000 6.14) allowed that enlarged door entrances for heavy goods vehicles could be approved but under certain conditions which were not fulfilled in this case. These illegal garages are not going to be used for heavy goods vehicles but for large cabin cruisers.

The area is not predominantly and legally developed for this type of garage so much so that four commercial garages in this street are under stop and enforcement notices. Two of them are actually built across the public street. The garages are surrounded on all sides by occupied private residences and they are actually built under a block of flats. The garaged cabin cruisers are bound to cause intolerable sound disturbance whenever their cooling systems are flushed out with fresh water.

The width of the street does not meet the minimum standard because one side of the street is permanently obstructed by a row of parked cars and the remaining carriageway width is insufficient for the passage of any two vehicles side by side.

Predictably, MEPA itself did not raise these objections before the Planning Appeals Board because it had already clandestinely decided to go back on the recommendation of its own DCC. During the sittings of the Planning Appeals Board we were relegated to the role of impotent and muzzled observers and by circumventing the normal process of an appeal to the DCC we were denied the only opportunity to state our case. The final staw is that any misrepresentations of MEPA policy documents by the Planning Appeals Board are immune from scrutiny in a court of law.

As a result of a recent policy decision this garage builder had no difficulty in obtaining a public service garage permit for his illegal garages. Such permits are now granted promptly and routinely on application. It was up to MEPA to object that the garages did not have a Final Compliance Certificate and that they were under stop and enforcement notices. MEPA did not object, not even when its attention was specifically drawn by the Malta Transport Authority.

When, ten years ago, we reported to the PA the numerous infringements of the building regulations taking place next door to our residence, our only motive was to protect our environment and to prevent the degradation of this peaceful, residential area by the encroachment of large garages from the adjacent commercial zone.

We never anticipated that we were only handing over this unscrupulous speculator into the clutches of MEPA so that fees, fines, etc., would be extorted from him before ways and means would be found to sanction his illegal activity.