Twenty-five organisations have welcomed the public consultation on the reform of the planning appeals system. ”This is a change that has long been called for, and we are glad to see it reach the table, however it is the bare minimum,” they said.

The organisations, in a joint statement, said that the reform ”answers a real and long-standing injustice. As the law stands, a permit can be acted upon while it is still being challenged before the Tribunal and the Courts. Buildings rise, ground is cleared, and uses are established, all before the appeal against them is heard. By the time a permit is overturned, the damage is usually already done and the remedy is worth little.”

The proposal puts a stop to this, they said. ”Once a qualifying appeal is filed, works are suspended automatically until the case is finally decided. It is a simple principle, and a correct one. A right of appeal that cannot protect what it is defending is no right at all.”

The organisations added that ”we will not pretend, however, that this is a great concession. It is the bare minimum. Suspending works while an appeal is pending is the least that any fair system owes the people who use it. It should never have been otherwise, and it has taken far too long to arrive.”

”We also want this reform enacted without the quiet, last-minute changes that so often appear to accommodate powerful interests,” the organisations stated. ”Yet one such opening is already written into the text. As drafted, the reform allows the Cabinet of Ministers to switch off the automatic suspension in an individual case, and to let a development proceed while its appeal is still being heard.”

They warned that ”this power is not confined to rare and exceptional cases. It reaches developments the Minister considers to be of strategic significance or of national interest, developments said to touch the interests of Government, and developments where the applicant is the State itself.”

The organisations insisted that ”these are broad categories, and most of them turn on nothing more than the Minister’s own opinion. In practice they capture the largest and most contested projects, including those that require an environmental impact assessment.”

They also warned that ”a protection that the executive can lift at will, in precisely the cases where an effective appeal matters most, is a protection with a hole at its centre. It should be removed. If it is kept, it must be defined narrowly, placed under real judicial control, and drafted so that no irreversible works can proceed while its use is being challenged.”

Additionally, ”we want to highlight the over-centralisation of Malta’s planning system, where decision-making and influence remains concentrated within national authorities, appointments and key institutions,” they said.

Tied to this, the organisations also called for the inclusion of ”robust accountability mechanisms for each of these proposed fixes to system, including but not limited to the proposed administrative changes, the system-wide digitisation, and the Cabinet’s overriding powers, with clear indicators on who the responsible person(s) and/or party is for each of these new changes.”

On the note of digitisation, the organisations said that they must also acknowledge that ”while this may certainly hasten processes and free up PA backlogs, a fully digital environment risks alienating those with limited digital literacy or resources, and alternatives should be provided to this effect.”

”We are clear about the limits of what this reform can achieve,” the organisations said. ”It repairs the procedure, not the substance. When the Tribunal and the Courts decide a planning appeal, they apply the same policies and the same framework that created the problem in the first place.”

They pointed out that ”many of those policies were written to serve development, not the communities and the environment that have to live with it. A permit can follow every rule and still be wrong for the place it is built. Suspension protects the appeal. It changes nothing about the law by which that appeal is judged.”

”Nor does it reach the failures that residents see most plainly. Enforcement must become real. Too often an illegal development is met with a fine that costs less than the profit it earns, or is regularised after the fact, so that breaking the rules becomes simply another cost of doing business,” the organisations said.

They insisted that ”a system that suspends works during an appeal, but does not act against those who build in breach, protects no one. And the authorities that grant permits, police them, and judge appeals must answer to the public, not to the industry they are meant to regulate. Genuine planning justice needs all of this: the policies rewritten, enforcement given real teeth, and institutions made truly independent.”

”This is, above all, a question for the young,” the organisations said. ”The decisions taken under today’s planning regime are, in every way that matters, permanent. A building does not come down. Open space, once lost, does not return. It is younger generations who will live longest with what is approved today, and who have the smallest say in approving it.”

They stressed that ”the Malta being built now is the Malta they will spend their lives in. That is reason enough to refuse to stand aside, and reason enough for organisations across our community to speak with one voice.”

The twenty-five organisations concluded by saying that they ”welcome this reform as a beginning, and only a beginning. We will keep pushing, plainly and persistently, for the deeper reforms that planning justice in Malta still demands.”

The joint statement was adopted and endorsed by the following organisations:

Front Zghazagh ghall-Ambjent (FZA)

Kunsill Nazzjonali taz-Zghazagh (KNZ)

Kunsill Studenti Universitarji (KSU)

Students For Liberty Malta (SFL Malta)

Ghaqda Studenti tal Ligi (GhSL)

Association of Students of Commercial Studies (ASCS)

Moviment Zghazagh Partit Nazzjonalista (MZPN)

KSM (Kunsill Studenti MCAST)

European Law Students Association (ELSA Malta)

Earth Systems Association (ESA)

Young European Federalists Malta (JEF Malta)

Student Demokristjani Maltin (SDM)

Junior Chamber of Advocates (JCA)

European Studies Organisation (ESO)

LGBTI+ Gozo

Ghaqda tal-Malti Universita (GhMU)

Betapsi

Kollettiv Zghazagh EkoXellugin (KZE)

Ghaqda Studenti tat-Teologija (GhST)

Malta Association of Dental Students (MADS)

Classics and Archaeology Student Association (CASA)

History of Art and Fine Arts Students’ Association (HOASA)

Department of English Students Association (DESA)

Malta Health Students Association (MHSA)

Flimkien ghal Ambjent Ahjar (FAA).

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