Interpreting Maltese planning policy is not a contest of slogans. It begins with the words the instrument actually uses while refusing to read them in isolation; the ordinary meaning is the starting point, but never the finishing line, because text must be read in its immediate setting of definitions, provisos, annexes and schedules – interpretation reconstructs the thought contained in the law whereas the spirit assists the letter.
Internal coherence is the next discipline: no provision should be read as if it silently defeats another, and where an amending clause lags behind a schedule, the interpreter privileges the scheme’s logic over technical slippage – in other words, no statute should be treated as self-contradictory. That coherence is anchored in the hierarchy of instruments: statute and regulation frame the field; Local Plans set baselines; DC15 policies convert those baselines into measurable envelopes; technical specifications operationalise them; guidance informs design choices within the envelope but does not displace binding policy.
Purpose then has its rightful place, not as a licence to rewrite the scheme but as a principle for selecting among meanings that the text will plausibly bear—non mens verbis sed verba menti servire debent—so that a categorical “shall not” is not diluted into a balancing factor and a numerical cap expressed in both metres and storeys is not stretched to “context.” The distinction between binding policy and guidance must therefore remain sharp: in DC15, P-policies are hard edges, G-guidance is advisory; height and depth envelopes, frontage alignments, and sectoral exclusions (for example, when a policy states that specified sites shall be excluded or that a maximum footprint shall not be exceeded) function as binary gateways, not sliding scales.
This feeds into the coherence and non-absurdity test: interpretations that generate surplusage, internal contradiction, or outcomes that the architecture plainly sought to prevent should be rejected; translating storeys to metres through annexed tables should be mechanical rather than creative; “context” identifies the prevailing condition within the area of influence by reference to plural, proximate commitments, not outliers. Because planning law often abuts sanctions and coercive effects (enforcement backstops, tightly structured gateways), clear-statement norms apply: the scheme must be accessible, clearly defined, and foreseeable, with residual ambiguity resolved in favour of the individual rather than expanded through elastic readings.
Finally, institutional roles must be kept in view: courts fix legal meaning and enforce the structure of the plan-led system; decision-makers then perform the evaluative planning balance within that structure, giving reasons where they depart from advisory views, but never legislating new envelopes through conditions or post-hoc “context.”
To sum up this method—text first, whole-instrument coherence, hierarchical discipline, purpose as tiebreaker, hard edges treated as hard, rights-sensitive clarity, and respect for institutional limits.
