The Planning Authority on Thursday decided not to renew the permit for the construction of 88 apartments and 93 garages in Kalkara, and will instead reassess the proposal in line with current policies.

The permit, originally approved in 2017, is for an extensive stretch of undeveloped land a few meters away from the parish church.

The site, measuring some 6,500 metres² falls within Kalkara's urban conservation area and is zoned as an area of high landscape value of the harbour fortifications.

In a statement, the PA said that during a Thursday hearing, the Planning Board decided to withhold the renewal of the development permit. It opted to re-evaluate the planning application in light of the current policies, treating it as a completely new planning application.

Once no commencement notice was ever submitted for works to begin, and there was no commitment on site, the permit cannot be renewed, it said.

In 2009, the PA issued an outline development permit in which it had agreed, i principle, to the zoning, density, alignment, building heights and massing of the project.

In 2012, the authority approved a full development permit, which was subsequently renewed in April 2018.