I refer to the article by Noel Grima entitled “Should we have an environment convention or is it too late now?” (TMIS, 17 May) and the proposal of “an environmental pan-party conference which ultimately will draw up a wide and profound agreement on what, will not be allowed any more in the future, whoever is in government”.

This brought to mind the proposal I had put forward in 1986 following the public outcry to the provisions of the Building Development Areas Act. The latter legal vehicle authorised the government to declare areas developable and take them over at very low monetary compensation to build new housing estates. The proposal was intended to regulate the issue of building permits outside building development areas, at the same time safeguarding in practical terms the environmental, archaeological and historical areas by mapping out these areas on plans and precluding any type of building activity within them. It was also intended to achieve a more coherent building development policy by allowing buildings to be erected on land which is already partly developed in areas where infrastructural services had already been extended or would have to be extended in order to cater for existing building development.

My proposal was accepted by the then minister, Lorry Sant, and I was delegated to discuss the proposal with the Opposition. A draft legal notice was prepared and discussions were held with two Opposition members, the late Carm Lino Spiteri and Lawrence Gatt, and there was consensus to the proposal. Unfortunately, the proposal was blocked by Dom Mintoff. Subsequently, some of the provisions enabling the declaration of protected areas were introduced in the Building Permits (Temporary Provisions) Act 1987.

The current legal status of protected areas is well defined in current legislation, including strict provisions of the environmental acquis and the provisions of planning policy as set out in the approved local plans. It is thus Mepa’s remit to uphold the provisions of the approved local plans. There are, however, still some grey areas when one is dealing with ‘outside development zones’. The notion introduced by the approved Structure Plan was to direct development towards existing developed zones and still allow certain uses to be located outside where these, by their very nature, cannot be located within the development boundaries, or where no provision has been made for such uses in the approved local plans. To overcome such difficulties, I had proposed that Mepa should zone the areas outside development boundaries having regard for the quality of agricultural land and land of landscape value, but unfortunately this was not actively taken up and development in such areas is still regulated by an ad hoc policy based on the proposed uses to be located there.

Also, the Structure Plan proposal to set up a professional estates department was not taken up by the government. This would have enabled a professional management of government property, making the best use of it and matching needs within well defined criteria. The result is that much of government property remains underutilised or abused.

 

Godwin Cassar