Controversial Paceville master plan put on backburner

Work on the new Paceville master plan, which was expected to be out by May, has been put on the backburner and might only see the light of day after the next general election, Times of Malta has learnt. The original plan was published last September, but the Planning Authority was forced to go back to the drawing board in the wake of a public outcry. The document fuelled controversy after it emerged that UK planning firm Mott MacDonald, which was commissioned by the PA to draft it, had a potential conflict of interest. This was due to the fact that it had been the leading consultant in a major high-rise project in Paceville which is still in the pipeline. Consequently, last December, Parliament's Environment and Development Planning Committee drafted new terms of reference for a revised planning framework. The revised plan is expected to reflect the feedback from a public consultation period, which had to be extended by four weeks following requests, including the Malta Developers Association. In December, PA executive chairman Johann Buttigieg told The Sunday Times of Malta that the “second draft” of the master plan was scheduled to be ready around April or May. However,...