A recent ruling by Chief Justice Mark Chetcuti has stopped a two-storey house in Santa Luċija from being turned into a pencil development, in what was hailed as a landmark decision by many planning experts.

The court sentence put paid to the idea that five-floor apartment blocks can be built wherever the local plans provide for a maximum height of this size; even if a proposed development respects the vertical limitations imposed by these plans, this doesn’t mean the permit is to be granted automatically. According to the Planning Act, developments have to respect the surrounding context.

Two leading architects have said this sentence will have profound implications on future planning applications, which the Planning Authority and its boards can no longer ignore.

It also ends a long-standing fallacy which has been peddled to serve the interests of the construction lobby, thanks to which the fictitious “right to develop” has resulted in countless “pencil” developments and allowed an unquantifiable number of buildings to sprout on ODZ land.

The right to develop has also been invoked many times by the Labour administration, which has claimed that local plans and development boundaries cannot be changed because, if this were to be removed, landowners could sue the government for damages.

But this has never been true: there is no such right enshrined in law and, if this were the case, it would mean that any zoning restrictions would not apply and outside development zones would simply not exist. This lie was backed by PA boards and commissions which have – by negligence or worse – overlooked this key article in the very law which they should be administering.

In light of the irreversible damage done to our skyline and urban cores, it would be legitimate to ask why successive PA boards and commissions have ignored this provision. Questions arise about their competences, if not their interests, especially seeing the speed at which a number of incongruous developments are being approved.

For example, residents in Gżira are right to fume at the authority and at developer Michael Stivala, whose hotel has been approved in a residential area by a three-person planning commission despite numerous breaches of the local plans and in complete failure to consider the surroundings.

After the Santa Luċija ruling, the Environmental Planning Review Tribunal sent a massive development in Balzan back to the drawing board. Linked to Joseph Portelli, it had also been approved by the same planning commission and presented by the same architect, former BCA chair Maria Schembri Grima.

The courts sent out a clear message to the PA and its bodies, including the “independent” EPRT, which quoted similar five-storey permits issued in the area, without providing a single example.

That the planning institutions have failed the public is now black on white and it becomes increasingly clear that citizens have to take their case to the courts in their quest for justice. In the meantime, until residents exhaust all the available remedies, flimsy planning laws allow developments to commence, only to be sanctioned, or even forgiven, because works would be completed by time the cases are heard.

Citizens are more than justified in their anger at these decisions. Not only has the PA failed spectacularly at both planning and at being an authority but it has also enforced an inexistent right, to the sole benefit of the developers’ lobby.

The introduction of personal liability for board and commission members would be a crucial deterrent to ensure laws are respected.