An appeal tribunal has revoked a planning permit granted to construction magnate Charles Polidano to redevelop four historic townhouses and their gardens in the heart of Balzan, because the Planning Authority had ignored illegal works done before the application was approved.
The Environment and Planning Review Tribunal upheld arguments made by appellants that the illegalities should have been addressed before the PA even considered the application.
In 2014, Polidano, known as iċ-Ċaqnu, was granted a permit to restore the historic buildings, make substantial additions and alterations and build a swimming pool in the extensive gardens.
The permit was granted by five votes to four despite the developer facing a €100,000 court fine for irregularities that had been carried out on site.
What was the application for?
The project application was to renovate three adjoining houses along Main Street, Balzan, and extend them into their gardens. Parking spaces for four cars in the garden was also proposed, with an entrance through a fourth building.
The site is in the locality’s village core, close to the Balzan parish church.
One of the properties, a 300-year-old palazzo and its gardens, dates back to the time of the Knights and is said to have been used by Grand Master De Rohan as his country residence. The building next door served as the servants’ quarters and next door to that was a building used as stables. There is also an underground cistern.
In 2011, the PA issued an emergency conservation order with a list of remedial works that needed to be carried out on the buildings. In 2012, the palazzo was included in the national list of scheduled buildings.
Polidano appealed the court-imposed fine which was handed down in 2013 after he allegedly uprooted trees and destroyed a rubble wall in the gardens behind the properties. The appeals court eventually reduced the fine to €10,000.
The tribunal has now upheld arguments that the illegalities, covered by two enforcement notices, should have automatically excluded the application from being considered.
The first enforcement notice was issued following the demolition of part of the building, part of a wall and structures in the garden, all without a permit.
What does the law say?
Under planning law, the PA must refuse a development application if illegalities existed on site, unless the illegal development was included for sanctioning and complied with policies.
The law further states that the illegal development may either be regularised through a specific development application solely for that purpose or through a development application which includes the sanctioning of illegal development as well as proposed new development.
Moreover, any illegal development which is not indicated for sanctioning in a development application has to be removed prior to the submission of the development application.
In this case, the tribunal said, the illegalities on site had to be included as part of the proposal and reflected in both the description of the proposal and in the approved plans.
It observed that although the authority argued that the proposal included sanctioning, there was no indication of this. One permit condition specifically stated that “This permission does not sanction any other illegal development that may exist on the site.”
In view of this, once the illegalities on the site were not reflected in the proposal, the application had not been processed and approved in accordance with the provisions of planning law, the tribunal ruled.
The permit, therefore, merited revocation.
This was the sixth planning application on this site. Previous applications, which were all turned down by the authority, included the proposed demolition of the buildings for the construction of 14 maisonettes, a proposal to construct 18 terraced houses on the site, and another to build a residential development comprising 43 dwelling units with underground parking facilities.