State of Planning Appeals: Malta's tribunal in numbers

The government launched the reform on 21 July 2026, with public consultation open until 18 August. Under the current law an appeal does not by itself suspend a permit, though the tribunal can suspend one on request. Under the proposal, a permit under appeal could not be used for construction, demolition, excavation or a change of use until the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal, or the Court of Appeal after it, has decided. The exceptions are emergency works for public safety and a Cabinet power to lift or limit the suspension, which can be challenged in court. The rule would not apply to appeals already running.

The bill had its first reading in Parliament on 27 July 2026. Both main parties promised in the May election to stop works while an appeal is heard, as our election guide records, and environmental NGOs have welcomed the proposal.

A freeze lasts as long as the appeal, so what matters is how long appeals take, how many permits they affect and how they end. We read all 9,343 planning appeals on the tribunal’s register since 2000 and matched 98% of them to the Planning Authority case they concern.

The median from the first hearing has fallen every year since 2022, from 16.1 months to 7.8 in 2025. The tribunal does not publish the date an appeal is lodged, so we time appeals from two points: the PA’s decision, which an appeal must follow within 30 days, and the first hearing.

In the first half of 2026, the median was 5.1 months from the first hearing (268 decisions) and 8.0 months from the PA’s decision (254). A half-year is a smaller sample, so it does not compare directly with a full year.

These figures cover appeals decided in each year, which can include old cases, so they do not show how long a new appeal will take. A second test follows appeals from their first hearing and counts those still pending:

On that measure the change holds. Of appeals first heard in the first half of 2019, 8% were decided within 6 months. Of those first heard in the second half of 2025, 72% were. The share barely moved for 5 years, then rose sharply from late 2024.

From lodging a planning application to an appeal verdict still takes close to 2 years: a median of 25.6 months for appeals decided in 2025, down from 30.6 in 2021.

The register holds 3,127 sitting records for planning appeals in 2020 and 1,426 in 2025, while the number of appeals decided rose from 342 to 436. Each record belongs to one appeal, so this is not a count of hearing sessions.

The queue has shrunk. At the end of 2020, 914 planning appeals were waiting for a verdict; at the end of 2025, 328, about a third as many. From 2021 to 2025 the tribunal decided more appeals each year than were opened. These queue sizes are estimates from the year each appeal opened and the date it was decided, and may miss cases that were reopened.

In the first half of 2026 the tribunal decided 268 planning appeals, against 223 in the first half of 2025.

Either side can take a tribunal decision to the Court of Appeal on a point of law. Below is the share of appeals first decided in 2021–2025 with a court ruling so far, leaving out withdrawn, abandoned and struck-off cases. The groups are by type of original appeal, not by who went to court:

All planning appeals285 of 2,009

14.2%

Originally third-party166 of 536

31.0%

Originally against refusal100 of 1,318

7.6%

For 259 of the 285 court cases with usable dates, the tribunal’s first decision came a median 15.2 months after the PA’s decision and the court ruling 23.0 months after it. In 27 of them the tribunal decided again after the court, a median 34.8 months after the PA’s decision. Court judgments we could not match, and cases still pending, are not counted.

In 2016, the year the tribunal was re-established under its own Act, third-party appeals roughly tripled, from 32 to 99. They have not fallen back since, and in 2025 made up 33% of planning appeals lodged, against 21% in 2014.

Applicants have become less likely to appeal a refusal. Share of refusals appealed, by year of refusal:

2014

58%

2017

57%

2019

51%

2021

47%

2023

46%

2025

43%

Objectors appeal a small fraction of what the PA approves: 1.8% of permits granted in 2025 (127 of 7,203), up from 0.6% in 2014. That counts permits by the year they were granted. The 138 third-party appeals lodged in 2025 are a different group: 133 against approvals (concerning 120 applications), 4 not against an approval and 1 unspecified.

The public has out-won developers every year since 2023. Across 2021 to 2025, third-party appeals that reached a final ruling were upheld in full or in part 41% of the time (238 of 580), refusal appeals 38% (515 of 1,365). The public’s rise shows over a longer run:

Nearly all of the rise is in partial wins. In 2014, two of the five successful third-party appeals were partial; in 2025, 45 of 56 were. Applicants’ wins followed the same path, from 28% partial in 2014 to 63% in 2025.

Of 140 third-party appeals decided in 2025, 11 were fully upheld, 45 partly upheld and 56 dismissed. These labels describe the ruling, not the fate of the project: even a fully upheld appeal can lead to revised plans or reconsideration rather than cancellation.

Refusals of sites outside the development zone were overturned in whole or in part in 35% of 711 final rulings from 2020 to 2025, against 41% of 824 for other sites.

Of 628 mapped third-party appeals, 602 (96%) are in squares that also contain refusal appeals; 193 squares contain both. The busiest square for third-party appeals, on the Sliema front, holds 41. Sharing a square of about 700 metres does not mean sharing a site.

Sliema records 71 third-party appeals per 1,000 permits granted. Small, largely residential localities in the centre are next: Lija (60), Għargħur (59) and Iklin (59), with Mdina at 60 on only 3 appeals. St Paul’s Bay grants more permits than Sliema but draws about a third as many appeals per 1,000.

These ratios are not the share of permits appealed: Sliema’s 70 appeals concern 61 applications, and appeals are counted by the year lodged, permits by the year granted.

Sources and scope:

• Planning appeals only. 9,343 appeals on the tribunal’s register since 2000, 98% matched to the Planning Authority case they concern. Enforcement appeals (enforcement action, stop notices, direct action, fines and environmental offences, 1,535 cases) are excluded.
• Court of Appeal. 1,267 judgments on eCourts naming the Planning Authority, 1,007 of them matched to a tribunal appeal (989 to planning appeals).
• Timing. Medians, with a month counted as 30.44 days. Site inspections do not count as hearings. Each measure in Figure 1 has its own sample, so the medians do not add up. Court timings leave out withdrawn, abandoned and struck-off appeals.
• Permits and refusals. Full development applications on the Planning Authority register, by date of decision.

The reform’s terms come from the 21 July announcement, the government consultation (closing 18 August) and the bill’s first reading on 27 July. They may change before the bill is passed.

Everything in this note comes from Pedament Pro:

• Every appeal. Every case on the tribunal’s register since 2000, searchable and filterable, including by whether it went to the Court of Appeal.
• AI summaries. An English summary of the ruling, read from the tribunal’s Maltese decision, its final minutes or the Court of Appeal’s judgment, for more than nine in ten decided appeals.
• Minutes and court decisions. The minutes of each sitting, where the tribunal published them, and the Court of Appeal’s judgments, linked from the appeal.
• On the map. Appeals plotted at the site of the permit they concern, beside the planning history around them. Appeals with no mapped permit, such as most enforcement cases, stay in the list.

See every appeal in Pedament Pro