The Planning Authority (PA) is continuing to refuse to publish the identities of public officers preparing key reports, despite the Ombudsman’s clear recommendation that this practice must end, Moviment Graffitti said on Monday.

A complaint had been lodged to the Ombudsman following the PA’s decision to withhold the names of officers preparing reports for summary applications. In his decision, Graffitti said, the Ombudsman stated:

• The identity of the individual responsible for making a decision on an application be publicly disclosed at the time the decision is rendered;
• The decision-making process should be conducted in a public forum;
• The identities of the officers involved in preparing the recommendation, specifically the Case Officer and the Endorsing Officer, should also be made publicly available without delay.

This issue came to the fore with the approval of PA/2035/21, an application seeking to sanction part of a development by Joseph Portelli in Sannat that had been previously revoked by the Court. The case officer’s report recommended approval of the application while omitting the fact that the development in question had been nullified by the Court and was, by law, ineligible for sanctioning.

The report was published without naming the officer who drew it up or the officer who endorsed it.

"This lack of transparency resulted in a lack of accountability for a blatantly illegal decision that made a mockery of the courts," Graffitti said.

After the Ombudsman presented his findings, the PA responded by asserting its intention to continue this malpractice, citing among other reasons: “…to keep the names internal for legitimate obvious reasons, one of them being the publication of names on news portals and social media, the NGO said. 

"Hiding the identities of public officers drafting and approving such reports is part of a rotten system designed to favour developers and provide them with impunity. The illegal sanctioning of Portelli’s penthouses in Sannat occurred after the building was completed while an appeal was still underway. The promised reform of the planning appeals law remains unfulfilled, and other developers have now followed suit, seeking to illegally sanction structures with permits revoked by the court," the group said. 

It added that the situation had worsened with Johann Buttigieg - a person with a proven track record of close ties to the island’s biggest developers - returning to head the PA. In this context, withholding the names of public officers preparing reports made it even harder to verify the integrity of PA processes, including potential conflicts of interest.