Bidnija sheep farm permit revoked but application will be reheard

In the latest twist in a saga revolving around the controversial approval of a three-storey sheep farm in a pristine valley in Bidnija the Planning Board has unanimously revoked the decision taken in 2019 but has ordered the reprocessing of the application.

Following this decision approved by 10 votes against none, the developer will have to “republish” the application which will go back the initial stages. 

The application will be screened by the Environment and Resources Authority to determine whether an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is needed or not.

Had the PA simply revoked the permit, the developer would have had to reapply to ‘sanction’ what has now become an illegal development.

The sheep farm was approved on a 3,200 sq.m site within Bidnija’s Wied tal-Ħżejjen on a site designated as a buffer zone for a Natura 2000 site, a detail which was omitted in the original case officer report recommending its approval. It was this omission of this detail which led to today’s decision to revoke the permit.

The recommendation made by the Development Management Directorate to revoke the permit while also calling on the authority to reprocess the application was questioned by lawyer Claire Bonello and by Romano Cassar who represents environmental NGOs on the board.

“I agree with the revocation of the permit but I disagree that the application is processed again… in this case the applicant should have to apply again,” Cassar said when faced by the vote. 

Ultimately Cassar chose to vote in favour of the revocation while expressing reservations on the application being heard again.

Article 80 which was invoked by the Planning Authority to revoke the permit only gives the power to the board to revoke or modify a permit.

 “It does not allow the board to resurrect an application. The application dies on the moment a permit is revoked. It does not allow the board to do anything else. If this happened in the past, the board was not acting according to law,” Claire Bonello said.

But a lawyer represented by the PA insisted that while the permit will be revoked according to law it is up to the discretion of the board to determine whether the application is reprocessed or not.

“What we are revoking today is the decision. In this sense the mistake found in the application can be rectified by revoking the decision and by republishing the application to see whether an EIA is needed or not.”

The PA’s lawyer also referred to another article in the law saying that the PA board can regulate its own procedures. Bonello rebutted insisting that the power of the board to regulate its own proceedings is not related to Article 80.

Architect Konrad Bezzina on behalf of the applicant also agreed with the PA’s lawyer. “We have not built the sheep farm without a permit and then applied to sanction it.  We cannot go back in time and ignore the fact that a permit has been issued and the sheep farm is already there.”

The Case Officer assessing the request  by the  NGOs had rejected six of the seven reasons given by the NGOs for the revocation of the permit, but accepted one of the reasons which was enough to revoke the permit namely that the approval was in breach of a policy requiring and Environmental Impact Assessment for  any residential, industrial, commercial, tourism development, infrastructure or public utility works in areas of ecological importance (AEIs) and sites of scientific importance (SSIs).

On her part Claire Bonello insisted on the validity of the other reasons she had given for the revocation of the permit, including the failure of the applicant to tick the right boxes in the application with regards to the location of the site in a protected area.

She also mentioned other omissions in the 2019 decision including the prohibition of new glass houses like the one proposed next to the sheep farm in the absence of proof of agricultural activity on the site.

Moreover, the site notice of the application was not put on the principal road leading to the project namely Triq il-Bidnija

Architect Konrad Bezzina on behalf of the applicant disagreed. “I always submitted the information which was requested from me by the Planning Authority.”

Applicant Jason Vella expressed his bafflement and surprise at the controversy. “I applied for a sheep farm and that is what I am doing… the sheep are already there… farming is not a business but a lifestyle which I do on a 24-hour basis… I can’t understand all this chaos.”

Following the approval of the original permit Vella had also applied for a series of amendments to add guest rooms, a retail outlet and a farmer’s residence to the original plans which were also approved in 2020.