Last month, the Planning Authority launched a public consultation inviting stakeholder views on future rural policy design guidance. The deadline for submissions expired a few days ago.

The objectives of the review were fivefold. First to establish whether current policy achieved the intended effect; to identify provisions which might be outdated or require clarification; to ensure the amended policy met the goals set by the Strategic Policy for the Environment and Development (SPED); to ensure the end-product was effective and in line with SPED and the National Rural Programme’s rural objectives; and to achieve a smooth transition when the new policy takes effect.

The rural policy promulgated in 2014 has been an abject failure. The abuses committed Outside Development (ODZ) have been a severe indictment of the successive unsuccessful attempts to improve the system.

The issue of ODZ has been probably the most sensitive and mishandled issue in Malta’s planning and land-use development since the inception of the Planning Authority almost 30 years ago.

Yet for such a patently important issue as future rural policy design – the fulcrum around which all ODZ development revolves – the Minister for Infrastructure and Planning, Ian Borg, gave the public just a few weeks to make considered proposals for improvement. To make matters worse, it turns out that a draft policy on this sensitive area was “already being drafted by a senior legal expert [before the end of the consultation period] and would be ready within weeks”.

Government maladministration, as evinced by this planning consultation process on rural policy, has reached a new nadir. Not only has the time allowed for consultation been inadequate for such a complex issue, but the apparent intention of drafting this policy merely from a narrow legalistic perspective will almost certainly ensure it is not fit for purpose. This policy should be dictated solely by planning and land use considerations.

To this end, the proposals submitted by the Chamber of Architects calling for greater protection of rural areas are on the right lines. The thrust of its proposals was for a change in the way land was classified since the existing categories were misleading and poorly defined.

The current policy, which divides Malta’s planning territory into four sections – development zones, ODZ, rural settlements and urban areas – has given rise to “unrealistic and unfocussed planning goals, contradictory policy objectives, and a sense of distrust…towards the Planning Authority”.

The Chamber therefore proposed that there should be only two broad categories: urban and rural areas. These two broad categories should then be subdivided into more specific urban or rural “typologies” with their own specific planning rules. Thus, the designation for ODZ would clearly separate the definition of “natural pristine rural areas” from “land taken up by agriculture”. 

The Chamber also called for a discussion to determine how to address the “defacement” caused by ill-thought out urbanisation in rural settlements over the past 30 years. It damned the authority’s SPED as “a set of objectives with little or no tangible results”.

Minister Borg’s call for consultation on this crucial area of planning has been deficient – with insufficient time given for a considered public response and an apparent attempt to write the policy before the consultation process was completed.

He should immediately re-open the whole process from scratch and hold public discussions centred around the Chamber of Architects’ sensible proposals.

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