Landowners seek green light for 10-dwelling ‘eco-community farm’ at Tas-Salib

A residential development consisting of ten “low density, net zero energy” dwellings built over two floors is being proposed instead of a disused mushroom farm on a 4,000sq.m plot of land in the Tas-Salib area in Rabat.

Its location is designated as an area of high landscape value and lies in close vicinity to the Chadwick Lakes and a number of scheduled cart ruts.

The residential complex is being described as an “eco-community farm” and the applicant is promising to reconstitute the site’s original topography.

Although located outside development zones and isolated from other dwellings in the area, the disused mushroom farm forms part of a rural hamlet where development policies allow new dwellings on uncommitted land with a footprint of 150sq.m.

But the local plan limits development to infill sites, corner sites and sites which form the end of a row of three dwellings. The local plan clearly excludes development on sites which contain mature trees and which contribute to the character of the settlement.

This is the second attempt to develop dwellings instead of the mushroom farm which had been in operation since 1976 but ceased operations in October 2013. A year before, the 47 residents in the Tas-Salib hamlet had signed a petition complaining of smells from the mushroom farm.

An application to erect eight dwellings instead of the farm was rejected in 2019 because rules governing rural hamlets do not apply to farm buildings, and the development was deemed to in breach of the Strategic Plan for the Environment and Development which limits land take-up in rural areas.

Back then the applicant argued that since the farm had ceased its operations it should be governed by the same rules governing the rural hamlet while insisting that mushroom cultivation, which is a form of industrial farming, was incompatible with its surroundings.

But the decision to rule out the development was confirmed by the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal, which pointed out that the mushroom farm was located 300m away from the main settlement in the Tas-Salib hamlet.

In 2019, the Environment and Resources Authority had also objected to the development noting “that various piecemeal illegitimate accretions and interventions” had been carried out in the area. The ERA warned that the existing development “should not be used as a stepping stone” for a residential development, reaffirming the principle that “disused animal farms should be left for redevelopment of legitimate rural uses such as farms and other agriculture related structures.”

In its first reaction to the present application, the PA’s advisory panel on agricultural issues noted that applicant Suzanne Portelli, who owns the company, is not registered with the Agriculture Directorate. The committee is objecting to the proposal “in principle “ since it is not for agricultural purposes.