News | Sunday, 26 July 2009

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Qormi Armoury developers made ‘fraudulent applications’ – FAA

Matthew Vella
The conservationist NGO Flimkien Ghal Ambjent Ahjar (FAA) has called for an investigation by the MEPA auditor into the permit issued for the demolition of the Qormi armoury.
The application is for the demolition of part of the Qormi Knights’ period armoury.
FAA maintains that shortcomings in the application of the permits are serious enough to warrant the revocation of the permit on the grounds of fraud.
FAA revealed shortcomings on the part of MEPA, saying that four applications made on the armoury site between 2004 and 2007, failed to declared the site to be in the Urban Conservation Area (UCA).
“Even more seriously, in each application the architects failed to fill the section declaring the site to be a scheduled building Grade 3 adjacent to a Grade 1 structure, as they are obliged to do,” FAA said.
FAA added that further infringements included non-submission of plans of the existing structures and street elevations which are obligatory within the UCA; and no mention of essential architectural features such as existing arches, kileb, xorok and alkovi which have since been destroyed.
Other shortcomings in this case include an application showing the wrong site and the applicants repeatedly declaring themselves to be owners of the site and subsequently producing evidence of the real owners after three years of processing
“FAA cannot understand how these regulations were repeatedly ignored by both the DCC as well as the Heritage Advisory Committee (HAC), in spite of the MEPA Directorate’s repeated recommendations to refuse the permit.
“The MEPA Heritage Management Unit went so far as to urge a revision of the HAC report saying ‘HAC may wish to comment whether their recommendation is still valid especially when considering that the property can significantly influence the contextual integrity of the adjacent Grade 1 property’.”
However, although the Qormi Armoury was described by the heritage office as being of “vernacular, architectural, cultural and historical relevance” and called for it to be protected by an emergency conservation order, the DCC proceeded to approve its demolition.
“FAA cannot comprehend how the HAC and DCC did not even question why the most valuable structure in the area was removed from UCA protection in the 2006 revision of the Local Plans and approved such a destruction of our architectural heritage.”
FAA questioned whether the fact that the architect applying for the demolition – Joe Bondin – sat on both the DCC and the HAC at the time of submission of the applications have anything to do with this.”

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.

All the interviews from Reporter on MaltaToday's YouTube channel.

EDITORIAL


Taking the fall

INTERVIEW