Gaming shop permits withheld due to absence of rules from gaming authority
James Debono The planning authority (MEPA) is in a quandary on what to do with pending applications for gaming shops in the absence of a clear set of rules of operation by the Lotteries and Gaming Authority (LGA).
MEPA’s development control commission (DCC) has stopped approving ‘change of use’ applications to turn shops and bars into gaming shops, and has deferred 14 cases until it gets clear guidelines on how to process these applications.
A spokesperson said MEPA is now consulting the LGA on all pending applications.
The MEPA board also recently approved a memorandum of understanding with the LGA on clear guidelines to regulate the processing of such applications.
In the past months MEPA was inundated with applications for gaming shops, receiving 60 since January 2008, 18 of which were approved and only six refused. 16 others are being recommended for approval by the case officer – only eight are recommended for refusal.
Even a stationery in Sliema was recently turned into a gaming shop, as the proliferation of these obscure gambling halls persist because there are no conditions or rules issued by the LGA on these establishments.
Only MEPA is entrusted with issuing the permits to change the use of normal shops to a ‘class 9’ establishment, which includes gaming arcades, cinemas, theatres, bingo halls or casinos, swimming pools, gyms, sports halls or shooting galleries.
But in the past weeks, the DCC expressed concern on this proliferation of gaming shops, deferring 14 applications until it gets guidance from the gaming authority.
One such application was deferred after the DCC asked for the guidance of the MEPA board when it expressed concern on how to process gaming applications “when regulations by the Gaming Authority have not yet been issued.”
The regulations have been in draft form for over two years, but never approved by the LGA. One of the rules, for example, prevents gaming shops begin sited near schools.
But MEPA is right now facing an application for a gaming shop in the vicinity of the Gzira secondary school on Sliema road. The case is still deferred but on 12 February, the DCC informed the architect it intended to refuse the application “in view of its proximity to a school.”
MEPA justifies this stand by referring to a Structure Plan policy forbidding development that has a “deleterious impact on existing or planned adjacent uses” and which “in the opinion of the Planning Authority would constitute bad neighbourliness.”
The DCC even sought legal counsel on gaming shops sited next to churches, over an application in Msida for a shop less than 15 metres from the Church.
But a MEPA spokesperson has now told MaltaToday the authority does not consider the vicinity to churches or schools in its assessments. “Such a use is assessed in line with the corresponding local plan which specifies the areas where such uses are considered acceptable.”
But as recently as 4 March, the DCC had asked MEPA’s legal counsel about an application for a Republic Street gaming shop within 150 metres of religious and educational institutions.
Another application in Triq Manuel Magri in Hamrun was also deferred after the case officer recommended a refusal to change a hair salon on the Marsa housing estate into a gaming shop, invoking that this constituted “bad neighbourliness”.
MEPA still faces an inundation of gaming applications despite its change of heart. In April alone, it received five new applications, and one application is for a gaming shop in the vicinity of a Marsaskala playing field.
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