Govt Mulls Legal Changes To Speed Up Land Supply

The government says it is looking to amend a series of laws to try and speed up the process of delivering developable land by up to two and a half years.

According to a spokesman from the Development Bureau, changes will be made to legislations regarding town planning, reclamations, road and rail works as well as environmental assessment.

This comes after Chief Executive Carrie Lam underlined in her last policy address the need to streamline land development so as to speed up housing constructions.

The spokesman said on Wednesday that it would be impossible to achieve that without making any legal amendments.

He said authorities would fix what they said are “obsolete or ambiguous arrangements”, and are planning to, among other things, ban people from seeking to change the land use of plots owned by others.

People who are not landowners, authorised persons or officials would be limited from voicing their views, but the Development Bureau spokesman said there are still different channels for them to do so, just not on legal grounds.

The government is also considering simplifying complaint mechanism so different departments won’t have to handle similar cases separately.

Authorities will combine multiple rounds of representations and hearings into one, so as to shorten public consultation from up to 17 months to just nine months.

The spokesman said the government is seeking to kickstart land resumption process and handle objections at the same time, without waiting for Legco’s funding approval, saying this could cut the time needed by one and a half years.

Officials are also exploring whether certain objections to land resumption, such as those regarding compensation, could be deemed invalid.

As for reclamation projects, authorities would like to be able to begin reclaiming land without having to wait for the approval of a statutory plan on the proposed area.

Separately, authorities are proposing to step up protection of sites of high ecological values, and prosecute any unauthorised development in the so-called “enforcement areas”.

Caesar Leung, a researcher from the think tank Liber Research Community, said he believes the proposed changes would greatly reduce public participation in town planning, and the lack of public scrutiny and engagement that resulted could affect the quality of future development projects.

“Of course you could always increase the speed by cutting procedures, but that is at the expense of some of the meanings of these procedures. One of the most prominent features of this amendment is to greatly reduce the time and amount of public participation.”

“Planning is not just about the speed, it’s also about the quality of planning. So if you have a planning project that is not what the public wanted, it is not necessarily a good plan.” he said.

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