Fenech Adami’s villa got Gonzi’s rubber-stamp for height extension

Former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi has been reported to have personally requested the Malta Environment and Planning Authority to exclude Beppe Fenech Adami’s villa in Gharghur from a prohibition on height extensions.

Labour media One News broadcast the contents of a letter from Gonzi in October 2008, in which he instructed MEPA chairman Austin Walker not to allow the addition of storeys on homes located on the periphery of the development zone that had been recently extended.

The Nationalist government had back in 2006 controversially increased the development zones; one of its beneficiaries had been Beppe Fenech Adami, whose villa was built in 1988 in a green area and was then included in the new development zones.

In his letter, Gonzi had told Walker that MEPA’s planning control applications to allow three-storey extensions would affect developments that had recently been added to the development zone. A planning control application is carried out by the authority itself to delineate new planning limits and boundaries of development in specific areas.

“In these sites that border onto rural areas, government would like to see a planning policy that prohibits an extension of building heights any more than is allowed,” Gonzi told Walker on 10 October 2008.

But on 13 October 2008 – merely three days after his instruction to MEPA – Gonzi informed the MEPA board secretary that he would approve individual PC applications, one of which affected the development of Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami’s own villa in Gharghur.

Fenech Adami had already submitted a planning application requesting clearance to build an additional storey and turret on his villa, back in March 2008. MEPA issued its green light two weeks after Gonzi’s letter to the board secretary.

Fenech Adami is today the PN's deputy leader for party affairs.

His house in Gharghur was built 1988 in place of two agricultural rooms that were located in a green area but not yet designated ‘ODZ’ at law. He was not yet an MP. A planning permit was only requested in 1994.

In 1998, Fenech Adami applied for a MEPA permit to sanction the construction of his swimming pool, which was issued in 1999 after the pool had already been built; according to One News, the pool deck of 700 square metres breaches a MEPA policy limiting it to just 100 square metres.