The Malta Chamber of Planners (MaCP) is concerned about Government’s announcement of the extension of the development boundaries. It is clear that through this exercise Government is by-passing and pre-empting the planning process as established by the Development Planning Act, 1992. Although, the MEPA’s involvement in the whole exercise is understandable, however, the process whereby Government itself sets the criteria, proposes sites (some of which would fail if assessed along these same criteria) and then places the onus on the MEPA to identify other sites fitting with the criteria already set, is certainly not the way Planning is to be conceived and not in line with the legal provisions in the Development Planning Act, 1992.
It should be noted that through the issuing of the draft Local Plans, the MEPA had already taken a clear position with respect to the limits to development boundaries which required rationalisation, as well as the criteria for such a process. For this reason, any departure from the MEPA position requires that Government prepares a Planning Position Statement as defined in Article 2 of the Development Planning Act, 1992. This article clearly states that such a statement “…means a statement issued by either the Minister or the Authority in order to provide a detailed technical explanation justifying a position with respect to a specific planning issue”, given that Structure Plan Policy SET 8 (as amended in 2005) states that “…the change of the boundaries of Temporary Provisions Schemes, or the designation of new land outside these boundaries will only be made, if necessary, as the result of a comprehensive or partial Structure Plan review, which takes place after the preparation, and approval of a comprehensive topic study or following the approval of the related Local Plan”. For this reason, the procedures involving the use of the Planning Position Statement as provided for in Articles 18, 19, 22, and 27 of the Development Planning Act, 1992 should be followed.
The MaCP is not against the principle that Central Government should participate actively in Development Plan and Planning Policy formulation and ultimately assume ownership of plans and policies. However, this should be done in the manner which is clearly prescribed in the law, and be transparent as is clearly required under the Aarhus Convention to which Malta and the European Union are party and the requirements of which are inbuilt in Legal Notice 116 of 2005 (entitled Freedom of Access to Information on the Environment Regulations, 2005) and Directive 2003/4/EC of the European Parliament and of the EU Council on public access to environmental information. Being the competent regulatory authority as well as Government’s advisor on matters concerning spatial development planning and policy, the MEPA should be provided with the space to formulate it’s advice independently and without any form of political pressure – it would then be up to the Government to endorse the MEPA’s advice or otherwise as long as it justifies its position in public through the Planning Position Statement instrument prescribed in the Development Planning Act, 1992.
How can Government state, at this stage, that not more than 10% of the submissions will be accepted? It is not the number which matters, or the dangerous relationship to an open-ended parameter such as the number of incoming submissions, but the actual nature and land-take of the sites being included and the total area these would amount to. This process will trigger additional pressures for the inclusion of new land, something that this country has already experienced before the then Planning Authority was set up in 1990, with disastrous consequences on the environment and landscape. The Cabinet Memo refers to the Housing Topic Paper prepared by the MEPA, but in this paper it is clearly identified that “there is sufficient vacant land within the existing development boundaries to develop 98,300 units whereas the likely need up to 2020 is in the order of 41,200.”
Potential supply exceeds projected demand by more than twice. In this scenario, the MaCP fails to understand the planning rationale behind this exercise, and the inclusion of such a large number of sites within the development boundary. This is certainly not a rationalisation exercise, particularly where Government has gone against its own criteria. As an example, a case in point is the area between Safi and Zurrieq which will result in the coalescence of these two localities, something which the criteria put forward by Government itself seek to avoid. Criterion b on page 4 of the Cabinet Memo states that “Moreover, amendments to the boundary should not entail the joining of one settlement with a nearby one.”
The MaCP stresses the importance that any planning decision should be made in the public interest based on the attainment of the goal of environmentally sustainable economic and social development as is established in several official documents (of both national and EU such as the 6th Environmental Action Programme, the Strategic Environmental Assessment Regulations and Directive and so on). Given the weaknesses of the criteria from a sustainability perspective and other considerations (e.g. the injustice issue), it is clear that most of the criteria do not reflect the public interest but those of individuals or organisations. The Development Planning Act cannot be used for such purposes, as the public interest is a basic tenet in Administrative Law and the Development Planning Act falls under Administrative Law.
The MaCP also fails to understand how exceptions to the criteria may be made on the “basis of strategic planning considerations combined with multiple requests. Multiple requests is indicative of the land having been sold off as plots.” This means that this exercise is accommodating speculation and is indirectly encouraging it further as it creates a precedent for the next time round when land is included again “by popular request”. This process increases the scope for abuse, ridicules the planning system, and is a recipe for unsustainable urban sprawl with negative consequences on land resource management and on the environment. It also reinforces the general perception that the main motivation behind key public decisions with long-term implications is the desire to accommodate prevailing pressures rather than a genuine need to address any technically justified national requirement.
Whereas the Chamber iterates that the role of Government is to set strategic policy and not to impose specific planning criteria on the relative agencies, there is a lot to say about these criteria as set – mainly their vagueness, but also their conflict between specific criteria.
The MaCP points out that such criteria should be based on the public interest and not social justice and the MEPA should also draw the attention of the public that Planning Decisions should be justified with respect to the public interest and not in connection with problems (which may be genuine) of individuals or individual organizations.
The manner in which the criteria are being applied retroactively only to submissions already made during the local planning process is in itself creating another injustice with those who felt they should not make a submission since their request would not tie in with the previously established criteria. If the criteria are to be followed then, on the basis of social justice alone, all qualifying sites are to be considered irrespective of whether a submission has been made or not. In this case the public should also be given the opportunity to appeal decisions taken as part of this exercise. It does not seem that the Government memo provides for such eventualities.
The MaCP also notes that the Memo provides a means to consider any site “which may have been left out and which given some further consideration and study may be considered for inclusion in part or in whole”. Such requests will be evaluated by a committee. The MaCP feels that more detail on the composition of such a committee has to be given, since the decisions of such a committee will overrule planning considerations as well as open the doors to abuse.
Finally the MaCP points out that a proper “rationalisation” exercise should also have considered exclusions from the schemes where development would seriously affect strategic planning, social and environmental concerns, providing also a mechanism to provide a fair and transparent redress/
compensation for such cases. In the same way that the hasty designation of development zone boundaries in 1988 created anomalies in terms of excluding developable land on no clear basis, similarly there are blatant cases where land should not have been included in the first place. However, apart from a couple of half-hearted exceptions, the exercise has only limited itself to inclusions, rather than objectively seeing the wider implications of the planning scheme boundaries as designated in the 1988 TPS.
The MaCP feels that this is certainly not a serious way forward and this whole exercise is a regression from the positive steps made in planning in this country. Government has to stick to the procedures set up in legislation established by itself, should certainly be more transparent and should not try to camouflage this exercise as “a planning exercise”. Certainly, such an approach goes well away from the sustainable approach which Government has been advocating for years and in accordance with the recently published National Strategy for Sustainable Development.