Final refusal for Attard’s ‘second’ petrol station

The Planning Authority’s appeals tribunal (EPRT) has re-confirmed its 2019 refusal of a permit for a 3,000sq.m fuel station on the Rabat Road, in the vicinity of the St Mary of Victories chapel.

The tribunal had already confirmed this decision in 2021, but subsequently the landowner and applicant Ludwig Camilleri took his case to the law courts, which revoked the refusal and reverted the case back to the tribunal.

The court of appeal had upheld Camilleri’s argument against the PA’s refusal to allow another petrol station in breach of the policy banning new gas stations within 500m of existing fuel stations, namely the Pit Stop station.

Camilleri disputed the refusal, saying the Pit Stop fuel station was 510m away from his site, by using the future configuration of the Central Link Road project.

The EPRT had recognised that the distance between the two stations had been “somewhat extended” by the Central Link but said this did not reflect the situation when the fuel station was refused, just a week after the approval of the Central Link project. The roads project had not even been officially published and works still had not even commenced. Calculating the exact distance between the two stations required the conclusions of the works, which was impossible at the time of the decision.

The EPRT has now recognised that this reason for refusing the permit was not valid. But it turned down three other arguments made by Camilleri in his bid to revoke the refusal.

Noting that Camilleri had presented plans to address the reasons cited in the original refusal, the EPRT said that by substantially downsizing a proposed retail shop and increasing the distance between the fuel station and a nearby borehole, these plans lacked “any clearance from Transport Malta”.

Camilleri’s plans had been rejected a year before the approval of a new policy banning new fuel stations on agricultural land, and which limited their size to 1,000sq.m outside the development zones. Therefore, Camilleri’s appeal had to be decided upon on the basis of the older policy, approved in 2014, which permitted 3000sq.m fuel stations on agricultural land.

Camilleri, the son of former Labour minister Lorry Sant aide Piju Camilleri, had acquired the Birkirkara petrol station licence in 2014 with the intention of relocating it to his ODZ land.

After considering a site in Salina, deemed a non-starter by the Environment and Resources Authority, he requested permission for his land on the Rabat Road. The site had been earmarked for a private cemetery in 2011, but this was also precluded by a new policy in 2014.