PA opens second Rabat cliff case

The Planning Authority has opened a new enforcement case over illegal development at Rdum tal-Vigarju, a protected cliffside west of Baħrija, where an earlier case from 2009 remains unresolved.

The new file, EC/108/26, again names Anthony Galea as the contravener, according to Planning Authority records cited by Newsbook. The site falls within an Area of High Landscape Value and inside the Natura 2000 protected west coast cliffs. That is the formal protection. The practical record is different.

Newsbook reported that the authority’s own aerial photos show land clearance in 2004 and a room built by 2008. The first enforcement case, EC/260/09, was then issued over a concrete platform, a room, a marquee and a boundary wall. It is still active. The structures were not removed.

What changed is not compliance but scale. The new enforcement action covers a wider area and lists additional illegalities on scheduled land. The notice refers to a “reservoir/pool”. Newsbook said the latest Google Earth imagery shows what appears to be chlorinated water, indicating use as a swimming pool.

That matters because enforcement is often announced as if the file itself were the remedy. It is not. A case is an assertion of authority, not the exercise of it to completion. On this site, the authority had already asserted that authority in 2009 and then left the illegal footprint in place long enough for it to grow.

Newsbook also reported that no structure on the site is covered by a valid permit or regularised by age, and that no daily fines had yet been imposed in the new case. If that remains the position, the state is still documenting the breach more clearly than it is stopping it.

The same report said nearby 2009 enforcement cases against other contraveners also remain active, suggesting this is not an isolated delay but a pattern in one of Malta’s most protected coastal stretches. The Planning Authority has, at least on paper, acted again. The missing part is the one that alters the land.