We bought an apartment at Portomaso six years ago after being assured by the Tumas Group sales manager that the zone between the apartment and the sea was a protected ecological area, and so could never be developed, and after checking that this was actually the case by consulting the relevant official documents.

We live abroad and visit Malta intermittently, for holidays. On our latest visit we noted that Mepa will shortly be deciding on application PA04096/08 to build 60 apartments on the ecological zone in front of the historic coastal fortifications built by the British about 200 years ago. We also learned that a group of residents had submitted an objection to this application to Mepa in 2008, which (objection) states that when the application for the original Portomaso outline permit was submitted in 1995, the developers were required to carry out an EIA and that the eventual permit was bound by the findings and recommendations of the EIA. Mepa issued the Development Permit in July 1995 and the drawings showed an ecological zone in the entire area below the fortifications where it is now proposed to develop the 60 new apartments.

The EIA, approved as part of the Permit, refers to “an area of Wedge Foot Grass, a species now known at only one other locality in the Maltese Islands and the area qualifies as a Level 2 site of Scientific importance”. The EIA concluded “”The Ecological Zone needs to be protected both during construction and following completion of the development”.

The Planning Authority approved several drawings in 1995 showing the protected ecological zone. When the proposals to redevelop the Hilton site and grounds, including a proposed development on the ecological zone, were submitted to the then Planning Authority, the developers were required to prepare an EIA and to submit a comprehensive development plan for the entire site. The EIS conditioned and guided changes to the original application drawings for the outline permit, including the protection of the ecological zone. The revised drawings, and proposals approved by the outline development permit, defined the size and scope of the development and specified conditions for the permitted uses of the rest of the site. That EIS and the drawings approved by the outline permit must remain the fundamental documents defining the scope of development permits for the whole of the site or for parts of it.

It is inconceivable that now that the entire development is concluded, significantly larger in scope than the originally approved proposal, Mepa will contemplate ignoring the findings and conclusions of the EIS, and acquiesce to the destruction of a level 2 Ecological Zone. Mepa therefore has no option but to refuse this permit application

It is strange that the Local Plan did not identify the site as a site of scientific importance (“SSI”), bearing in mind that in both outline permits PA/1270/95 and PA/5448/95, Mepa included under “Permit Condition 9 – Ecological Protection” reference to “Wedge Foot Grass/Sea Chamomile area (a Level 2 SSI protected by paragraph 15.38 of the Structure Plan’s Explanatory Memorandum). No construction activity (except breakwater and marina works), dumping of waste materials or effluent or building encroachment is permitted in the area outside the entrenchment wall.” It is amazing how such a site of scientific importance could have been wiped off the map at a stroke when the Local Plan was approved in 2006!

There are no permitted buildings in the ecological zone in any of the original key permit drawings, and any new permit will be a major concession by Mepa, contradicting its own outline permits of previous years for the entire Hilton site re-development project. Such a decision would be of enormous material benefit to the developers who have already been granted a major development by Mepa when approving the original permits, but would rob the general public of the important ecological zone protected by the earlier permits for the Portomaso site. All this would be greatly unjust from a social justice point of view. The planning gains made for the general public when Mepa issued the original permit would all now be forfeited by a permit enabling the developer to squeeze 60 new apartments and the public would suffer the loss of the ecological zone, scarce green area and the concealment of the scheduled bastion wall behind the massive new development. Furthermore, the suspect treatment of the purchasers of property in the originally approved development may not go unnoticed by foreign investors.

The original permits were issued after exhaustive studies by independent consultants, as required by the Planning Authority including the EIS prepared by Halcrow Fox in 1995, and no applications can be considered if they contain proposals going against the studies and findings of the EIS. If the developers insist their proposals should be considered in the light of the new local plan policies, then it is appropriate to note that conditions and drawings approved by the outline and full development permits for the site have priority over the local plan and, moreover, any development permit application involving impacts to issues dealt with in the original EIS should be addressed by independent consultants in a revised EIS.

Victor Agius

LE PECQ

FRANCE