On June 12th the Planning Authority’s Annual Report was issued. The document, presented by the PA CEO and Chairman of the Executive Council Johann Buttigieg, makes for some rather uninformative reading. The aim of the report is to illustrate how the Authority functioned as an organisation over the past year. It’s interesting to note the brief mention the report makes on how developments in the Outside Development Zone [ODZ] were assessed by the Directorate. It starts by saying that “Development outside the development boundaries is a much debated issue. Such a debate is not only allowed but encouraged by the current legislation so that the best possible decision is taken on development proposals”.
Firstly, what does the PA mean by ‘debate is not only allowed but encouraged by the current legislation’ - How is the current legislation ‘encouraging’ debate about ODZ? And if it is, how is the PA actually supporting this debate? Conveniently the report makes no mention of how public hearings are handled. 2018 was the year when protestors were physically dragged out of a Planning Board hearing during which an application for a fuel station in Zejtun, that threatened more ODZ land, was being discussed.
The report goes on to state that:
“There are those who argue that no development whatsoever should be allowed in rural areas. Nonetheless, there is development, such as that related to the sector of agriculture, which can only be located outside the designated limits for development”.
Here opposition to development in ODZ is simply being brushed off by putting all forms of criticism into one basket and labelling it as extreme (and therefore unpractical) by focusing on the zero-development approach. The truth is that the majority of the people opposing further development in ODZ are not actually saying ‘no’ to each and every single request. If the proposed development in ODZ were truly genuine and absolutely necessary for the agricultural sector to survive, and being proposed in a sensitive way that safeguards the environment, then many are likely to not oppose it. The issue of course lies in the fact that most developments in ODZ approved by the PA are not only completely unrelated to agriculture but in fact hurting the industry.
The fuel station applications are a perfect example of this. Up until the point when the protests were held in 2018, 12,000 square meters of agricultural land had already been lost through the approval of four ODZ fuel stations. The number continued to increase with more agricultural land being written off and allowed to be carpeted over in asphalt. A case in point is the latest approved fuel station in Burmarrad, where both the Agricultural Advisory Committee and the consultants engaged by the applicants themselves confirmed that the land being proposed for development was ‘Good Agricultural Land’ with the potential ‘to sustain two to three crops per year, generating annual potential earnings of up to €11,000 per tumolo’. Despite this the PA still approved a needless fuel station in Burmarrad’s ODZ.
The report concludes on the subject of ODZ by stating that:
“Applications for development in ODZ are thoroughly assessed by the ODZ team so that a balance is found between the provision of legitimate, genuine uses and the safeguarding of biodiversity and the natural landscape.”
How can the developments we are seeing approved in the ODZ be considered as being of either genuine or legitimate use? Since the amendment of policies governing ODZ in 2014, there have been dozens if not hundreds of applications through which small rooms or even piles of rubble in rural areas were converted into luxury villas with pools, so long as the applicant could prove that the site supposedly once served as a residence. Is this what the PA means by legitimate? Furthermore, what measures are even being carried out by the PA to counter the negative impact of all this ODZ development and ensure that biodiversity and the natural landscape are truly safeguarded?
The Annual Report gives no real indication of what is actually happening within the PA, nor of how its actions and decisions are impacting the general public that it should be serving, rather, the document is just another failed sales pitch put forward by an Authority drowning in bad press.
Tara Cassar is an architect focusing on planning policies and environmental issues related to land-use, active with a number of local eNGOs.
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