Kamra tal-Periti, Din l-Art Helwa and FAA criticise demolition of Sea Malta building

The former Sea Malta building is a fine modernist building, which, like the Marsa Power Station, did not make it to the list of scheduled buildings. (See page 20)

The Kamra tal-Periti, together with Din l-Art Helwa and FAA, have asked for clarifications from the Planning Authority last Friday, when the Authority’s approval of the demolition of a significant part of the building, on the basis of LN 258 of 2002 Development (Removal of Danger) Order, was brought to its attention.

This Legal Notice allows the Authority to authorise “emergency remedial works to mitigate or remove existing danger”. The Legal Notice requires, inter alia, a clear statement of the degree of danger and the description of the “full nature, methodology and extent of the proposed works”. In addition, the Authority is only allowed to authorise, by this process, works which are limited to the removal of the danger and as long as the danger cannot be removed by temporary shoring. The Legal Notice emphasises that the procedure has to be “limited to the mini- mum emergency works required to remove the source of danger, until any required permission for more lasting interventions is obtained”.

The Kamra tal-Periti can state that, nowhere in the structural appraisal report submitted by the consultants of the applicant, is it stated that any part of the structure is in a state of immediate danger.

On the contrary, the report advises that “remedial measures to strengthen the existing building are clearly not financially feasible”.

The statement of the applicant, as reported in the media, that the current works are removing unsafe structures that were at risk of collapsing, is not quite correct. The structural appraisal report commissioned by the applicant does not say so.

In any case, the Legal Notice envisages that such a dangerous structure procedure can only be issued on the “basis of a detailed site inspection by a … perit appointed by the Authority”. This has clearly not happened and therefore the procedure is vitiated.

The Authority is called on to immediately declare the dangerous structure approval null and void, since the information submitted to it was not sufficient to merit the use of this particular planning procedure.

This is not the way to treat our diminishing modernist heritage. The fact that the site has been immediately added to the Menqa concession, as reported in the media, probably better explains why the structure had to be considered as dangerous. Real estate is more profitable than restoring heritage buildings.