New conditions for redemption of groundrent on government properties
The government is to introduce new conditions to a scheme for the redemption of the groundrent of government properties so as to deter speculation, Parliamentary Secretary Jason Azzopardi said this morning. He said the scheme was suspended at the end of January in order to clear a backlog of applications and introduce new measures to prevent abuse and speculation. The scheme was originally introduced for former Church-owned property and then extended to all government-owned properties used as residences. Since its announcement in 2002, the scheme attracted more than 2000 applications and in view of the extensive verifications needed, there is currently a backlog of 3,000. “For this reason, the scheme has been temporarily suspended and no new applications are being received,” Dr Azzopardi said. He said the Government Property Division was using this opportunity to create a database of the pending applications in chronological order. The pending applications would be considered according