The potential impact of the legal notices proposed by the government, which would allow owners of illegal developments to apply for a concession or for a regularisation permit, could be bigger than the proposed planning Bills, President of the Chamber of Architects and Civil Engineers Andre Pizzuto told The Malta Independent.

Before summer the government had announced planning reforms consisting of a set of bills and legal notices. The two bills deal with appeals regarding Planning permits and amendments to the Development Planning Act. Through the legal notices in question, the government is proposing that illegal developments built prior to 1994 on land located Outside the Development Zone (ODZ), and illegal developments built before 2016 within the development zone, become eligible for regularisation. It also proposes that illegal developments that took place up until 2024 be eligible for a concession. Regularisation or granting of a concession would be against a fee and there are eligibility exclusions, such as for Class A archaeological sites.

"We have reservations. We were always against the concept of regularisation on a matter of principle because it rewards people who breached the law at the expense of those who didn't," Pizzuto said.

"The other side of the argument, which we also understand, is the question: what is the alternative? If someone has a house on ODZ that has been there since the 80s, what will you do?" But he said the proposal is not limited to housing. "Previous regularisations were limited to specific types of development. We are concerned that this is going to open Pandora's box. There may be consequences to this proposal which I don't believe there has been enough time to analyse. The potential impact of these legal notices could be bigger than the planning bills."

With these proposals, the government is also introducing the possibility of regularisation in ODZ, Pizzuto said. He added that the Chamber doesn't want to legalise situations that will have serious negative impacts.

Another point, he said, is that the Chamber has expressed its strong reservations for giving regularisation permits to buildings on public land, "and we specifically mentioned the Armier boathouses as an example of a no-go area in terms of regularisation."

Pizzuto spoke while being interviewed by this newsroom. The first part of the interview appeared in yesterday's edition of The Malta Independent on Sunday.

Pizzuto was also asked whether he believes the Chamber of Architects & Civil Engineers proposal for Msida Creek would have dealt with the traffic problem as efficiently as the project Infrastructure Malta is implementing. He said: "That implies that Infrastructure Malta's project is resolving a traffic problem, which it is not. What there is, is an environmental quality problem, which is what we tried to fix. The evidence is in the flow of traffic that improved significantly when the temporary detours were set up. Anybody who's driven through that area knows how easy it is to move around in that area despite all the signage and uneven roads. The traffic flow is quite good. Not that there was much of a problem to start off with, because one would not expect to swim through the area without any bottlenecks at 6pm or 8am during rush hour."

"Public transport should have been the solution for rush-hour congestion, but that is a separate issue. We did see an article published a few days ago on another paper which made reference to an application that Infrastructure Malta has submitted which basically replicates part of the proposal that we had made which would have managed, in a better way, the traffic flow. It seems like it was not an irresponsible use of 'Photoshop' after all," he said, in reference to a statement the Infrastructure Malta head in July 2024 had made.

"The Msida Park is a missed opportunity that we will all regret when driving through the area."