The Qui-si-sana Residents’ Association protested against the waiving of an environment impact assessment (EIA) for the Fort Cambridge project.

The association said in a statement that Maltese law laid down that an EIA had to be commissioned for projects of more than 300 units.

The waiving of the EIA, in addition to the acceptance of the project description statement as a substitute, was a blatant violation of EU law as it was not made available to the relevant EU authorities, nor was the required EU clearance obtained.

The association said that as pointed out by members of the board of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, the project description statement was inadequate in several respects and in the association’s opinion, it did not contain sufficient information to allow a sound decision to be taken.

It was also a conflict of interest to allow the architect responsible for the design of the Fort Cambridge project to author the project description statement. Furthermore, the author of the traffic impact statement was apparently not qualified to carry out traffic studies.

The association noted that the tender for the project was altered substantially after it was awarded and the plans submitted were in major respects different to those presented to the public in the development brief.

It added that given that the EU was investigating the project’s violation of regulations, it was surprising to see prominent financial institutions, which prided themselves on being leaders in corporate social responsibility, participating in such a “questionable undertaking”.