A large area in the protected Wied Għomor, a valley that runs between Swieqi and San Ġwann, is at risk after an application for a lavish villa complete with a swimming pool was recommended for approval despite being refused three times so far.
A previously proposed project on the same site, set on four tumoli of land, had been marketed online by a real estate firm for a handsome €5 million, boasting unobstructed sea and valley views.
The applicant, Neville Agius, is planning to turn the abandoned structure off Triq il-Kaffis into a villa with a swimming pool, an underlying basement and landscaping. The application will be decided tomorrow.
The case officer justified the recommendation to approve the application through a 1969 planning permit for the villa which was, however, never completed and abandoned in shell form.
The structure in question was meant to be a ‘showhouse’ for 12 similar buildings that were being planned for the surrounding area and to serve as a residence. Only one was built but never finished. The area was within the development zone in the late 1960s.
Several attempts to develop the site were repeatedly refused.
The first application was received in 2008, proposing alterations to the villa, the construction of a pool and an extension at ground floor level. This was refused in March 2015. An appeal was filed but was later withdrawn by the applicant in 2018.
In 2019, a development application was filed, proposing the demolition of the building and reconstruction of a new one on the same footprint, adding a swimming pool and other landscaping works.
The application was refused in 2020, with an appeal confirming the refusal a year later and then confirmed by the Court of Appeal last year.
In a strong objection to the application, Swieqi mayor Noel Muscat urged the PA “to stop further degradation of our natural environment”.
“An isolated site in the middle of a protected natural valley should not be allowed to be developed if the concept of ‘planning’ in Malta is to have any significance and purpose,” he wrote.
He added that the planning regulations in 2023 are different from those in 1969, adding that intrusion into protected areas by development cannot be tolerated.
Former St Julian’s mayor and Nationalist MP Albert Buttigieg also objected to the proposal, along with several eNGOs and residents.
The Environment and Resources Authority said the project will “set an undesirable precedent for proliferation of similar ODZ developments, resulting in cumulative urbanisation of the wider rural environment, ruining the rural character and the overall natural state of the area”.