Qala Local Council appoints lawyer and architect in fight against ODZ development

The Qala Local Council has appointed a lawyer and an architect in its fight against a development in a rural area known as Ta’ Muxi.

The council has said in a statement it will continue to fight to safeguard the locality’s environment.

It has appointed lawyer Claire Bonello and architect Carmel Cacopardo to represent the council in representations made against the project.

The planning application is to turn a dilapidated room into a sprawling villa. The applicant, Mark Agius, known as Ta’ Dirjanu, wants to turn the room, situated in an Outside Development Zone, into a villa with a footprint several times larger than the original structure.

The council said there is unanimous agreement against the project. The council had already objected to the project in 2016.

The Planning Authority is scheduled to take a decision on the application next month.

On Tuesday, the hearing on a controversial planning application to turn a dilapidated room into a sprawling villa was postponed by a month by the Planning Commission after the developers promised to scale down the development.

The applicant, Mark Agius, known as Ta’ Dirjanu, wants to turn the room, situated in an Outside Development Zone, into a villa with a footprint several times larger than the original structure.

Times of Malta recently reported that the land was sold to Excel Investments Ltd last January for the sum of €500,000, which has been described by real estate agents as five times the market value.

The majority shareholder of Excel Investments is property developer Joseph Portelli. The other shareholders are Agius and Daniel Refalo.

The applicant claims that the room was inhabited around a century ago by a woman called Grazia Mifsud. A controversial PA policy states that ODZ structures can be converted into residences as large as 200 square metres if it can be proven that it was used as a residence at any point before 1992.

The PA was presented with a document claiming that Grazia Mifsud was found dead inside the room in 1921. This was backed by another document, obtained from the Qala parish.

But Times of Malta has reported that neither document provides an address for Mifsud and that the only information in these documents is that the woman was found dead at 4am on 17 August 1921 “in a house without a number in the Ta’ Muxi area in Qala.”

Furthermore, another document the newspaper has obtained shows that the woman lived in another house in the centre of the village.

During Tuesday’s meeting, the planning directorate insisted that the death certificate was not proof of residence.

But architect Elizabeth Ellul, the chairperson of the Planning Commission, complained about the presence of planning directorate officials, saying this was a first.

The hearing was postponed to 1 October, with the developers asked to submit new plans.