Appeals tribunal grants permit for minister’s company’s farmhouse

The Environment and Planning Review Tribunal has overturned a decision by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority to turn down an application to sanction infringements in a Żejtun farmhouse owned by Pada Builders Ltd, a company owned by Patrick Dalli, husband of Equal Opportunities Minister Helena Dalli.

The company was listed in the minister’s declaration of assets.

The development was refused because the scale and massing of the building proposed for sanctioning were considered to go beyond the allowable interventions.

Effectively the original permit was for 245 square metres but the development was irregularly increased to 365 sq.m. This was according to MEPA, 24 sq.m. more than the 341 sq.m. permitted by present policies.

The case was exposed in reports by the Times of Malta and was the topic of a number of press conferences by the Nationalist Party which denounced that works had continued on the site despite the absence of a planning permit. In the appeal Dalli claimed that the decision to refuse the application “was conditioned by media pressure”: “It would be condemnable and deplorable if a correct application is refused... to satisfy those whose only interest is to demage me because my wife is involved in politics.”

The tribunal replied that its competence is limited to planning issues.

According to Dalli the permit should have been issued since his latest proposal addressed the “unacceptable additional floor-space of 24 sq.m.” by accepting to remove a 25 sq.m. room. But the Authority rebutted that claim, saying that the 25 sq.m. area was retained as a yard enclosed by walls which were higher than one storey. 

In its decision the tribunal concluded that since the yard was extended and no longer enclosed on two of four sides, it could not be considered as an internal yard. The tribunal ordered Patrick Dalli to pay a €2,329 fine and to present plans showing the removal of paving in the yard and to prove that the room had been demolished. Dalli was ordered to grow trees in the yard.

The tribunal was composed of Martin Saliba, Simon Micallef Stafrace and Ludovico Micallef