The Planning Authority (PA) in reference to a statement published earlier today by a number of eNGOs, has said that the “amendments only propose to regulate sites with an existing permit.”

The PA statement on Thursday evening was in relation to the proposed amendments to the Regularisation of Existing Development Regulations, issued by the PA for public consultation.

The Authority said that it would like to clarify that “the proposed amendments are only being widened to include pre-August 2016 developments which have their site perimeter partially beyond the development boundaries as well developments located entirely within a Category 1 Rural Settlement or included in the 2006 Local Plans.”

The PA stressed that “the category of development which are partially located outside development zone boundary can only be regularised if these were originally covered with a development permit. Therefore, the regulations as proposed only seek the regularisation for deviations from the original permit, and no such regularisation applies for developments for which no permit exists on the site.”

“Additionally, sites completely located outside the development zone boundary shall not be eligible for regularisation,” it said.

The Authority went on to say that “the introduction of these regulations did not accommodate ‘big developers’ as claimed by the eNGOs but were clearly targeted to address relatively minor, non-conformant issues that households are facing when coming to sell, or use their property as a guarantee for finance. In fact, since the introduction of these regulations in 2016, the Authority received over 19,500 applications.”

The Authority also said that it “refutes the claim that ‘Regularisation requests are not published, unlike planning applications, and the public cannot make objections during a representation period.’ All regularisation applications are published weekly and the public can submit an objection.”

Additionally, same as with PA applications, a site notice is affixed to the site of any property seeking to be regularised, the Authority concluded.

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