Illegal Hugo’s burger kiosk ‘service to workers’ says owner

The CEO of Hugo’s hospitality and food chain is appealing a second refusal to an illegal burger kiosk on the Tal-Barrani road in Għaxaq, arguing the mobile food outlet is proving “a service to many workers”.

Luke Chetcuti has refused to remove the illegal 42sq.m kiosk erected at the corner of Tal-Barrani and a narrow lane. Instead, he pays a daily €50 fine since last month when the Planning Authority refused his second attempt at regularising the kiosk. He has now once again filed an appeal to the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal against the refusal.

But the PA cannot remove the kiosk while an appeal is pending, except for the owner to keep paying daily fines until a final decision is taken.

Located just 12m from the Tal-Barrani arterial road, Transport Malta has complained that the outlet can cause congestion problems and a lack of visibility for drivers, and a lack of safety for clients and pedestrians.

While Chetcuti’s architect is claiming the kiosk provides “a service to the many workers employed in the vicinity”, he has rebutted the claim that the kiosk poses a danger, being “well off the arterial road” and that it “provides a more than adequate queuing line without any risk of causing congestion on the main road.”

Chetcuti expressed his willingness to conduct traffic studies to contradict TM’s claims. He argued the kiosk is just across the road from a fuel station that offers catering facilities and can be displaced as required being a converted container vehicle.

The kiosk had already accumulated daily fines totalling to €3,820 when the PA rejected the application in June 2021. Originally an identical application was rejected in 2020 due to safety concerns raised by TM.

Yet the establishment was only slapped by an enforcement order in April 2021, four days after an article published in MaltaToday. But the daily fine has been dated back to the establishment’s first attempt to “sanction” the illegal development in 2020.

The application has now been twice refused due to its safety risk. Planning rules prohibit kiosks that are likely to cause problems of congestion or interfere with visibility near road junctions, or where customers have to stand on the carriageway to be served.

The kiosk also exceeds a 20sq.m limit for such mobile eateries and is partly located outside the development zone.