Carmel Cacopardo

The current debate on the changes required to the land use planning system is following two completely different and incompatible paths.

The Government’s chosen path is one which considers the Planning Authority (PA) as the natural ally of the development lobby. Government considers it essential that the land use planning process is flexible, efficient and responsive to clientelistic feedback. This translates into ensuring that policies and procedures should be such that development proposals are quickly transformed into development permits and that rules are as flexible as possible to allow this to happen in as short a timeframe as possible. The PA is considered as a development permit factory. The faster the output of development permits the better. This is the philosophy of the government underlying the proposed land use planning overhaul.

The alternative path is that of the environmental lobby. It considers quality of life, community rights, environmental protection, climate change, sustainability, transparency and accountability as the basic issues which need to be addressed clearly and directly. This necessitates a tough rules-based approach with immediate no-nonsense action for infringements. It also means stakeholder access and involvement as well as consistency in the applicability of policy.

The two views are not compatible. So much would have been clear had government tried to listen to all stakeholders, not a selected few.

Notwithstanding, during the past thirty years efforts have been made to try and bridge these two contrasting views. These efforts were not successful, resulting in a considerable patching up of the land use planning system. One reform after the other tried to create policies and procedures in order that the two conflicting views co-exist: as a result, one mess after the other was created.

The rationalisation exercise of 2006 is one of the ingredients of the current mess. Two million square metres of land outside the development zone (ODZ), overnight, became ripe for development.

A second ingredient was the approval of the local plans, which approval, primarily in 2006, circumvented the reach of the Strategic Environment Assessment (SEA) Directive of the EU. This was done when five (out of seven) of the said local plans very approved very quickly, practically days before they would have been subject to the provisions of the SEA Directive. This circumvention signified that the local plans did not in any way consider the cumulative impacts which they generated. Consequently, these impacts were unaddressed. This is an additional burden which today we shoulder unnecessarily.

A third ingredient contributing to the current mess is the lack of enforcement. Instead of enforcing the rules, Maltese land use planning authorities launch one amnesty after the other. Currently the amnesty in force is the regularisation scheme, which, in these columns, when launched, I described as A stinking amnesty (TMIS: 4 September 2016).

The reform proposed through Bills 143 and 144, in my view, is the result of government’s basic political decision to do away with the hybrid system which over the past years has paid lip service to environmental issues, climate change, community rights, quality of life, sustainability, transparency and accountability and move full speed ahead in the other direction, that is the consideration of the planning process as a development permit factory.

As a result, the proposals in Bills 143 and 144 represent a dangerous rollback of democratic safeguards, environmental protections, and public accountability in land use planning. The proposed reforms favour developers at the expense of the public interest. They will lead to a deepening of the institutional capture of the Planning Authority (PA) by political and commercial interests.

Bills 143 and 144 reinforce a long-standing pattern of regulatory weakening that allows powerful developers to bend land use planning rules to their will. In fact, the rules will now be bent a priori to facilitate matters.

The proposed reforms are regressive in nature. While government may argue that the changes are necessary to modernise land use planning and promote economic development, the bills are structurally skewed toward deregulation and the centralisation of power.

Rather than addressing deep-seated problems in Malta’s land use planning system—such as outdated local plans, sustainability, climate change impacts, lack of transparency and accountability, as well as weak enforcement—the reforms will make matters worse than they are at present. They will accelerate the transformation of land use planning from a rules-based public service into a discretionary system dominated by political and commercial interests. Malta is navigating a jungle in which institutional integrity, citizen rights, and environmental protection are steadily being overgrown by unchecked development.

This is what is on offer as a result of Bills 143 and 144 currently before Parliament.

The alternative is tough. It means ditching clientelism, slowly building practically from scratch a rules-based land use planning system which is transparent, democratic and accountable. The rule of law, so basic to parliamentary democracy is essential in land use planning too.

It is about time that government starts to listen to all stakeholders and not limit itself to listening to its paymasters.

first published in The Malta Independent on Sunday : 3 August 2025

Carmel Cacopardo is ADPD-The Green Party’s Deputy Chairperson