A staggering 21.2% of the permits which were granted by Malta’s planning authorities in the last 15 years were initially recommended for refusal by the application’s case officer, data tabled in Parliament shows.
Data tabled by Planning Minister Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi in response to a Parliamentary Question filed by PN MP Darren Carabott showed that a total of 16,029 planning applications were given the green light by MEPA or its successor the PA between 2006 and 2021 despite being given the thumbs down by the Authority’s case officer.
That is the equivalent of 21.2% – or just above one out of five – of the 75,522 applications which were approved within the same timeframe.
The rate at which the case officer’s recommendations have been overturned was at its highest between 2006 and 2011 under the Nationalist Party administration and between 2019 and 2021 under the Labour Party’s administration.
Indeed, the data shows that 1,813 planning applications were approved in 2006 despite being recommended for refusal – equivalent to 30.5% of all the applications which were approved in that same year.
Similar rates were seen in the following years: 25.4% in 2007, 23.8% in 2008, 21.5% in 2009, 24.1% in 2010 and 27.5% in 2011, before they dropped significantly in the following years to 9.5% and 9.9% in 2015 and 2016 respectively.
In recent years however, there has been a return to the higher levels of a decade ago, with 27% of the applications approved in 2019 being ones which were recommended for refusal. That rate stood at 25.4% in 2020 and 28.6% in 2021.
Full figures aren’t available for 2022, but the data tabled in Parliament shows that up until the end of April there had already been 643 applications which were granted despite the case officer recommending otherwise.
Out of the 16,672 applications accepted between 2006 and April of this year, despite the case officer recommending otherwise, 2,386 of those were applications in Gozo.
In Malta meanwhile, the hotspots for such approved applications were St Paul’s Bay (751), Rabat (693), Sliema (643), Birkirkara (633), Mosta (614), Qormi (604), Naxxar (568), Zebbug (529), Mellieha (490) and Siggiewi (481).
This all being said, it should be noted that when a case officer recommends an application for refusal, it isn’t the final step in the matter. After a negative recommendation comes through, the applicant is given the opportunity to make changes to the project in order to satisfy the reasons for the negative recommendation.
A recommendation for refusal can be given for a whole raft of reasons, ranging from blatant breaches of existing planning policies, to small tweaks being needed for sanitary or accessibility reasons.
Applicants are also ultimately allowed to argue their case before the Planning Board or Commission (depending on the scale of the application), which can then decide to overturn the case officer’s recommendation.
The data tabled in Parliament does not make any differentiation as to whether a case officer’s recommendation was overturned by the Board having heard the arguments of the applicant or whether it was because there were actions to rectify any shortcomings in the plans – actions which would have then made the project acceptable.