Chairman of the South builds wooden summer house on commonly owned terrace in the north

Labour MP and Chairman of the South Silvio Parnis, in collusion with Labour MP Charles Buhagiar who is masquerading as his architect, has applied to build a wooden summer house on the commonly owned terrace of a block of flats in St Paul’s Bay.

He originally built just such a wooden summer house in 2011 (see the picture below) but the Planning Authority ordered him to dismantle and remove it immediately (details in the comprehensive Times of Malta report below). The Times had asked him about it at the time and he said to the newspaper that he had no idea he needs a permit to build “a wooden shed in a garden”.

Facing fines from the Planning Authority, Parnis had then dismantled the wooden structure – and presumably had it put into storage – but now that the MEPA is Taghna Lkoll he has applied to have what is clearly the exact same thing or a version of it reconstructed on that terrace.

The place where it is built is most definitely not a garden but the commonly-owned tiled terrace of a block of flats overlooking the sea at St Paul’s Bay. Parnis does not own a flat in the block, but is claiming a right to build a summer house in the common parts on the basis that an old woman somehow left him her share of that terrace. This bit is background information which is not in the newspaper report.

It is precisely because he does not own a flat in the block that he is building that summer house for himself and his wife and son, but calling it a ‘shed and restroom’.

The flat-owners are, quite understandably, objecting to this.

Not only is the place not a garden but a commonly owned tiled terrace with no soil or plants, but the structure is not a garden shed either, as Labour MPs Parnis and Buhagiar are claiming falsely. It is full-on residential quarters with a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and living area. There is also a mobile lavatory of the sort commonly used at large parties outdoors.

I have just checked to see whether KullHadd and Super One TV news are carrying this story, but it appears that their reporters and photographers got lost in St Paul’s Bay’s tangle of one-way streets.