A yard off Durumblat Street in Mosta that was supposed to be used as agricultural land has instead been used to deposit inert construction waste and as a parking lot for heavy machinery.

In spite of a pending appeal on a refusal to grant the operation a permit as well as a suspended enforcement notice, the authorities are yet to decide on the case, six years down the line.

The yard, which jars with surrounding open spaces and agricultural land, can be clearly seen from the street.

An application for sanction was originally submitted on behalf of John Vella in 2007.

At the time, the applicant had attempted to sanction a parking area and ancillary offices for what he described as “disused land” (PA/07315/07).

The application was before the Planning Authority (PA) until 2015 before being refused. That evidently did not stop Vella from going through with his plans regardless.

An enforcement notice (EC/00305/08) was issued in 2008, with Vella appealing both the notice as well as the 2015 decision to refuse his permit application.

However, the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal (EPRT) has been deferring the decision since Vella first appealed six years ago.

Efforts made to contact the EPRT on the matter have gone unanswered, with the only information available being provided by a PA spokesperson who said that the EPRT is going to discuss the appeal on May 11 of this year.

No further explanation for why the contravener has been allowed to operate unhindered for the past six years was given.

The enforcement notice lists the name of a company known as Jimmy Vella Ltd. When contacted, Vella stated that the area is used to park heavy machinery but is not a commercial operation within itself.

He then claimed to have “a new permit” and that the authorities had misinformed the media about the case.