Plans to build a block of apartments in Xagħra’s Urban Conservation Area have been refused by the Planning Authority, delighting an environmental activist group which is now pushing for the policy used to refuse the application to be legally enforceable for all projects. 

The Planning Authority on Tuesday turned down the application to build the five-storey plus penthouse development, noting that it would be built within 50 metres of a Grade 1 scheduled windmill. 

In reaching its decision, the PA focused on a policy introduced last March which recommends that planners assessing applications should take nearby scheduled buildings into account and seek to lessen the effect of recent developments. 

Activist group Flimkien Għal Ambjent had spearheaded opposition to the Xagħra apartment block proposal, and on Tuesday the group said that it was pleased that the PA had refused it. 

It said that the recent policy change, which countered the previous practice of using past eyesores “as a precedent to justify further uglification,”  should now be enshrined into law and made to apply to all planning applications.

In its current form, the policy is subject to the discretion of PA boards deciding on applications. 

FAA also called for the government to rescind a policy known as DC 15 Annex 1 building heights, which makes it possible to build five- and six-storey buildings across Malta and Gozo. 

It said such buildings were ruining village cores and that Gozo’s skyline was being “destroyed” by vast party walls rising up in areas full of two- or three-storey buildings. 

Gozo’s charm risked being ruined by developments which did not fit the island’s character, it said, undermining the tourism which many Gozitans depended on. 

It cited as examples recent development applications to build blocks of hotels and apartments in Xlendi, Xagħra, Nadur and Qala as examples of projects which would “wreck the quality of life of old-established communities.”