None what so ever Antoine – just that the perception now exists. Power corrupts – absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Spot on, Albert.

When all is said and done, planning was and still is, and will for ever remain, a responsibility of the government. MEPA is simply an organisation, created by law by means of a simple majority in parliament, which has been delegated the power to issue permits. MEPA can be removed with the stroke of a pen. So, yes, its the government which shoulders the political responsibility for bad planning decisions.

The Nationalists have tried to make us forget that there is such a thing called political responsibility. That is something which elected politicians have to shoulder and they cannot hide behind the excuse that decisions are taken by professional bodies.

The DCC on the other hand was reversing these decisions left, right and centre creating a free for all, especially with most members on it (including some chairmen) who were practicing architects in certain cases even representing clients who had been agrieved by the case officers creating a conflict of interest that was unethical.

Enough examples had been given in previous posts and enough people had been mentioned.

The MEPA auditor has now reported that the Bahrija permit was issued against MEPA policies and should never had been issued. The developer had asked for his intervention as well as that of the police.

Now that the permit has been found to have been issued irregularly, who exactly are the people that the police are going to investigate? Please do enlighten me.

Notwithstanding what Michael Falzon has been saying, MEPA was a beehive of irregularities, to put it very mildly, and this required the PM’s immediate intervention.

What I suggest is that the DCC is composed of more than the three suggested persons, the majority of whom should be from the judiciary (there are some very competent retired magistrates and judges around) supported by retired architects non of whom must be in practice, plus the fact that the archaic rules and regulations governing case officers are to be modernised and streamlined for better efficiency, fairness and transparency.

Incidentally, Raphael, didn’t you say that you would never post on Daphne’s blog? I think your exact words were “My mistake was getting sucked onto her blog – never again.”

Raphael, I think you are exaggerating and, with all due respect, you have no clue what development-planning entails.

Can you give us an example of this “opportunity for corruption” that you mention? What sort of decisions do you imagine that the PM will be taking, for which developers must be laughing?

@john azzopardi

Michael Falzon is spot on in his article.

You argue that there were many abusive permits. I will not argue with that except that I would describe most of them as permits with which I disagree. In a discretionary planning system, it is inevitable that there will be decisions which some people would perceive to be abusive.

The real problem isn’t the “abusive” permits. The real problem is the many hundreds of applications which the MEPA’s case officers forward to the board with a recommended refusal. They interpret policy in a very restrictive manner and shift responsibility of policy interpretation to the DCC Board. It is safer for them, it involves them less hassle and they are less likely to be accused by some environmental crusader of abuse or worse.

Michael Falzon is very correct when he states: “Meanwhile, some people who think they know everything – just because they scratch the surface of what happens at Mepa – started selling the idea that there was something sinister in the DCC overturning negative recommendations. This myth stuck.”

John, there will be changes. At present, policies are made by MEPA and ministerial endorsement is more or less a formality. In the new system being proposed, policies will be made directly by government and MEPA will be consulted as one of the stakeholders albeit the most important one. This, however does not mean that policies will be left to the whim of politicians, as you said. We seem to have lost all sense of proportion if we are comparing this situation to that during the time of Lorry Sant (I don’t think Patrick Holland had anything to do with the issue of building permits).

Contrary to popular misconception, policy-formulation is not the most controversial aspect of development planning and does not represent “power”. The real controversies – and sometimes abuses – occur when policies are not followed. That is why, incidentally, I do not agree with Michael Falzon when he says that MEPA officials should be allowed to go against policies. What’s the use of setting a rule and then authorising officers to break it?