The Planning Commission this week elected to completely ignore a court judgment and instead sanction a row of illegally built penthouses associated to Gozitan property mogul Joseph Portelli.

The permits for the penthouses, situated on two separate blocks of apartments in the Gozitan village of Sannat, were struck down in March 2024 by the Court of Appeal after activists took the legal route to object to the project.

This was after the Planning Authority had approved the permits – despite the planning directorate’s case officer recommending that the applications should be refused – and after the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal (EPRT) shot down an appeal and confirmed the permits.

The Court of Appeal however ruled that the permits should never have been granted, saying that both the PA and the EPRT had misinterpreted the Gozo local plan both when it comes to how far the top floor of a development should be setback from the street and that it had also misrepresented planning policy in order to approve the building of two pools in an ODZ area on the site of the development.

The permits for the additional floor of penthouses and the swimming pools within the development were therefore revoked. 

However, because Malta lacked – and still lacks – legislation which stops developers from building when their permit is under appeal, the project was structurally complete by the time the decision had been handed down by the Courts.

Through two third-country nationals, two separate applications were filed to sanction the penthouses as built.

PA 5625/24, filed by Elidon Koci, was to sanction six penthouses on the block, situated in Triq it-Tempju tal-Imramma in Sannat, while PA 5626/24, filed by Klevis Hoxhaj, was to sanction another four penthouses on the building next door.

In the case officer’s reports for both of those developments, the planning directorate noted that while the Court had partially revoked the permits for the uppermost level that was to be sanctioned, “the Directorate points out that the overall height of 12.30m has a legal commitment in the recently approved PA3869/24 on the adjacent site facing Triq it-Tempju tal-Imramma.”

That planning permit was to sanction two more penthouses – also filed by a third-country national associated with Portelli and his business partner Mark Agius, better known as Ta’ Dirjanu.

The case officer noted that a request for that sanctioning to be revoked was rejected, and therefore the additional floor of penthouses which the courts had found to be illegal were actually “favourably considered” – at least in the case officer’s eyes – when compared to the Gozo local plan and the DC15 policy.

As a result, the case officer recommended that both of the sanctioning requests are approved.

The Planning Commission heard both applications in a session on Tuesday.  The body is made up of three people: chair Elizabeth Ellul, and members Pierre Hili and Cornelia Tabone.

Ellul was appointed to chair the Planning Commission board that handles applications in UCA areas and Gozo in April 2025. 

The appointment had raised ire, particularly from environmentalists: Ellul had previously been deputy chair of the Planning Board and the chair of the Planning Commission that handled planning applications in outside development zones.  She was removed from those posts in 2020.

She had faced calls to step down over her role in approving an application by Joseph Portelli to turn a dilapidated countryside room in Qala into a full-blown villa.  It was later revealed that Ellul’s husband had done work for Portelli – a conflict of interest that was never declared prior to the approval of the permit.

The application was approved, but Portelli renounced it regardless.

Ellul was removed from her posts soon after and shifted to the regularisation permissions commission instead.

Activists said that her reappointment earlier this year was “a step backwards”, adding that the PA was “doing everything possible to give developers what they want” and that “she always bowed to the will of developers.”

Hearing the two sanctioning requests on Tuesday, Ellul and her colleagues Hili and Tabone all voted in favour – despite the courts ruling the development illegal.

Mark Agius, Portelli’s business partner, has filed a separate application to sanction the two swimming pools which the Court of Appeal had labelled as illegal as well.