The issue of Outside Development Zones has been probably the most sensitive and most mishandled in Malta’s planning and land-use development since the inception of the Planning Authority almost 30 years ago.
Despite several unsuccessful attempts over the years to improve the system, we have remained saddled with a policy which has been ineffective and open to abuse by both planners and government ministers.
Architects, lawyers and planners conversant with the arcane and permissive rules governing rural policy and ODZ have invariably found a way to breach them and to turn the rules to their client’s advantage. Opinion polls regularly place the abuse of ODZ as one of the issues which is of most concern to citizens.
In a draft policy document setting out new rules to protect the rural environment and outside development zone published recently for public consultation by the Planning Authority, attempts have been made to close a number of loopholes which over the years have been used creatively by those wishing to circumvent the spirit, if not the letter, of the law supposedly protecting the Maltese countryside.
Is the latest attempt to tighten up rural policy about to change all this?
A reading of the proposed new policy elements gives cause for hope. One of the most flagrant areas of abuse - where so-called ‘dilapidated buildings’ in ODZ, often in pristine countryside, have been turned into villas provided it can be shown that they had been used as dwellings in the past - will in future no longer be allowed.
Past applications have been presented based on the slimmest of justifications, such as the notorious application to turn a 31 square metre dilapidated room in outstanding countryside into a spacious villa and pool with garden.
A series of amendments to the proposed rural policy should prevent this and other abuses in future. ‘Ruins’, defined as dilapidated structures which have lost all or the majority of their supporting walls, will be excluded completely from these provisions. Applicants will have to prove with certainty that the property in question is capable of accommodating a dwelling.
In another amendment, disused livestock pens, which previously qualified to be developed into new dwellings for redevelopment into a single residence, will in future only allow for a dwelling for a livestock farmer and restricted to within the boundaries of the farm.
An area which has given scope for abuse concerns agritourism and so-called ‘countryside hotels’ under the banner of agritourism. Previously, the policy would allow for agritourism developments of up to 10 rooms with facilities, which would include swimming pools over a floor space of 400 square metres.
The new policy permits a change of use of agricultural dwellings for ‘employment-generating use’ which would cater for niche tourism in a way compatible with preservation of the rural surroundings.
The new draft policy also permits change of use for farm structures to be turned into ‘touristic accommodation’, provided the applicant has been a registered farmer for at least five years, with the site in question already having an area of 100 square metres with the potential for extension to 250 square metres.
The policy demonstrates a welcome tightening of rural policy, and better late than never. But that is only the first step. As always, its success will depend ultimately on those in the Planning Authority and its commissions entrusted with implementing policy without fear or favour. The cause will have been won when the public has confidence that this is the case.