Tomorrow, Thursday, MEPA’s DCC Board is to decide the Full Permit planning application to build a block of flats in Windsor Terrace, Sliema. This part of Windsor Terrace has a strict two-floor Local Plan Height Limitation; a fact which has blocked several other applicants from building higher.

It had came as a great shock when MEPA’s Planning “Development Control Committee” granted the developers of this site an Outline Permit to build five floors. This would create illegal high party walls on either side, as the flats are to be built right in the middle of a row of seven identical, fine old two-storey Sliema townhouses. This streetscape had been protected, however the MEPA protection indicator had mysteriously disappeared around the time that this application was submitted.

FAA has repeatedly been calling for the rescinding of this Outline Permit due to the fact that the DCC Board overturned the Case Officer’s recommendation to refuse the permit, without giving justification for such a reversal according to planning regulations.

FAA asks how MEPA can refuse others’ permits on the grounds of washrooms that are a few feet too large, then grant a such an outrageous permit for a five-floor block of flats in a two-storey, supposedly protected, Urban Conservation Area. The granting of a Full Permit tomorrow would certainly undermine all MEPA’s claims of a new transparency and a level playing field for all.