The festive season is clearly a time to rejoice, particularly for architects presenting their clients’ development applications at a time when everyone is too busy drinking, eating and opening Christmas presents to notice what is being proposed next door.
In a time-honoured tradition, development applications to MEPA poured in by the hundreds during the authority’s 10-day shutdown period between Christmas and the New Year, with a good part of them proposing construction outside development zones.
Between 15 and 29 December, around 400 applications had to be filtered by objectors who could not get through to MEPA.
As potential objectors tried getting the full development details from the MEPA offices, they realised this was impossible given that the authority was on shutdown, but the two-week submission period remained the same.
This meant that even in the remote chance that potential objectors noticed the newspaper announcements of construction about to take place in their vicinity, they were unable to go to MEPA to check out the plans or ask for guidance due to the prevailing shutdown.
Reacting to repeated objectors’ protests, MEPA finally extended the submissions deadline yesterday through a legal notice issued at the last minute, which revokes the official deadline carried with each application, although the decision has not yet been advertised.

A MEPA spokesperson said objections could still be sent by mail and email during the shutdown period, although objectors could not view the plans.
“However, MEPA has been discussing for some time ways in which to increase public access to information,” the spokesperson said. “For this particular issue, the authority drew up a legal notice so that the shutdown period is extended to the date of the Two-Week Notice. The Legal Notice stipulates that the shutdown period shall not be considered as forming part of the notice period as indicated in the Development Planning Act. The period for the submissions will automatically be extended by the number of notice days falling within this period.
“MEPA will be giving this Legal Notice, which is retroactive, due prominence.”
But the objectors were still disappointed with MEPA’s decision even after it announced it was extending the deadline, arguing that in reality those who wanted to view the details of applications submitted in mid–December would still have a couple of days left after the extension.
“We really appreciate that the ministry took action on the matter the very day it was brought to our attention, on Boxing Day,” said Astrid Vella of Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar. “But we can’t understand how MEPA should have taken almost two weeks to make this announcement public, by which time the very extension has expired. If MEPA really wanted to be fair to the public, this extension should have been built in to the original application deadlines and posted prominently on the MEPA website.”
In what has become a well-known ploy to architects who try pushing their clients’ applications at this time, one finds that among the professionals resorting most to this trick is Siggiewi Mayor Robert Musumeci, who just on 22 December submitted a dozen applications, many of them outside the development zone.
Similarly, Musumeci submitted many applications to regularise structures that were built illegally, while hundreds of the late December applications are full of Urban Conservation Area listings, and even a multi-storey hotel in Ball Street, Paceville, being slipped through while residents are distracted by the festive season.
Meanwhile his wife, Louise Musumeci, is appointed on the MEPA Heritage Advisory Board which scrutinises many of the applications submitted by her husband’s firm, while Musumeci himself has been appointed to the MEPA Minerals Board which monitors quarrying applications.
Meanwhile last Sunday, MaltaToday revealed how an application submitted by MEPA deputy chairperson Catherine Vella has led to the destruction of a bridge and valley in Santa Marija Estate, Mellieha.
Planned and submitted by Vella herself, the ongoing construction of a bungalow in the on a green area in Triq il-Pont is not only destroying plots of virgin land against every recommendation of the MEPA case officer who deemed the construction unacceptable. It has also meant that a bridge at the foot of the valley has collapsed in the midst of last week’s floods given the extensive bulldozing beyond the permitted footprint.
The developer has also obliterated other parts of the valley known as Wied Ghajn Zejtuna to make way for trucks and bulldozers, even though this was not covered in the permit issued in August 2006 against all odds.
In fact, the proposal submitted by Catherine Galea for the construction of a bungalow in Triq il-Pont with basements and swimming pool includes the felling of existing protected trees.
Incidentally, the affected road is yet another one of many in the estate owned by Bertu Mizzi that requires extensive maintenance and rebuilding, after the multi-million property magnate declined to honour his commitments to build and service roads in the exclusive area, despite various court sentences ordering him to finish the roads.

kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt