Plans to build a new courthouse in Gozo, which dates back nearly two decades, have stalled yet again.

Although the initiative was re-launched with much fanfare two years ago by Gozo Minister Justyne Caruana, there have been no new signs of progress since.

In October 2018, Dr Caruana’s spokesman had said the new court would be built as announced a year earlier on “the outskirts of Victoria”. The site was described as lying “behind the ex-MDP site, which at the moment is being regenerated to house Gozo’s ICT & Research Hub”.

The ministry, he said, was planning to regenerate the whole area but the development was subject to Planning Authority approval “since this entails a change in local plan”.

Asked again recently for any update, he said the ministry was still “awaiting approval or otherwise.”

The court project was not mentioned in the government Budget for 2020 announced last Monday. And, at the end of last week, Dr Caruana told PN 
Gozo spokesperson Chris Said that her ministry is exploring the  possibility of a more central location for the new court and that it would be "premature" to give additional details now.

Court employees who spoke on condition of anonymity complained about the interminable delays that have consigned them to cramped working conditions in the current premises at the Citadel. The historical building is small and sections of its interior walls are crumbly and mouldy.

The courtrooms and waiting areas with their old furniture and austere benches reserved for the public evoke colonial-era historical imagery.

Plans keep changing and stalling

Plans to build a new court in Gozo were conceived at the turn of the century when a site was chosen in Victoria on which a car park currently sits.

Eventually, in 2016, the development was formally unveiled as a new “landmark architecture feature”.

The building, which was approved by the Planning Authority, displayed an avant-garde exterior that was stridently criticised for being incongruous, sumptuous and costly – an estimated €14 million.

Construction has not started.

Plans to build a new court in Gozo were conceived at the turn of the century

In November 2017, the new minister, Dr Caruana, announced a change of plans and location, saying the chosen site was geologically unsuitable for the magnitude of the structure.

The new plans displayed another modernist, grand building fronted by a large plaza, and spread over an area as large as the courts in Valletta.

 The cost was set at €5.5 million.  But the proposed location, on the edge of Xewkija’s industrial zone, immediately drew criticism.

The neighbourhood behind the glass-fronted offices of the ICT and Research Hub currently being built consists of an abattoir, a farmers’ store, an ironmonger, a masonry workshop, a marble factory and open fields. It has not been specified whether these yards would be relocated, or whether the new court would sit among them in the dusty and noisy road. 

Court sources have other ideas

Court sources were dismissive of the location, and the magnitude of the building and wider development.

They pointed out that improvements in the case clearance rate is making the proposed building ever more out of proportion,  especially since the workload is expected to ease further after the retirement of Magistrate Paul Coppini next week, who is often criticised for delays in civil court cases.

Magistrate Coppini’s successor is expected to improve the clearance rate upon taking over and inheriting his 426 active cases.

Recent statistics bear this out. The backlog in Gozo’s civil court has already been thinning out in the past few years.

In Gozo’s criminal court, Magistrate Joseph Mifsud has cleared a considerable backlog and volume of cases since his appointment nearly five years ago.

Statistics given in Parliament a year ago showed that, by the end of October 2018, the active cases in Gozo’s criminal court that had dragged on for longer than the average of 450 days, had fallen to just 56.

On extrapolation of overall statistics, this suggests a better clearance rate than the equivalent cases in Malta. 

However, the sources maintain that shortening case-duration would not diminish the necessity of better premises given the limitations of the current building, including access.  In internal government consultations, Gozitan court officials had identified an existent building adjacent to the police station in Rabat that could be converted into court premises.

Its proximity to the car park and police station, as well as sufficient size, were seen as advantages.

It is not clear why this recommendation had not been taken up by the government.

Sources said the cost of purchasing the building might have been a factor.