LCQ19: Applications for construction of small houses

Following is a question by the Hon Cheung Hok-ming and a written reply by the Secretary for Development, Mrs Carrie Lam, in the Legislative Council today (May 27):

Question:

Regarding the Lands Department's processing of applications for construction of small houses, will the Government inform this Council of:

(a)  the following details of the applications received by each district lands office in the past five financial years (shown in Appendix);

(b)  the number of applications the Lands Department expects to receive in each of the next five years, with a breakdown by district lands office; and

(c)  the respective numbers of applications currently being processed and yet to be processed by the Lands Department, as well as the respective numbers of such applications received in 2006 or before?

Reply:

President,

My reply to the three-part question is as follows:

(a)(a)  In the recent five financial years, the total numbers of new small house applications received by each District Lands Office (DLO) of the Lands Department are shown in Annex 1.

(a)(b)  As regard the "number of processed cases in (a)" required in item (a)(b), the Lands Department does not have the statistics on the number of cases processed within the same year of receipt. The numbers of small house applications approved by each DLO of the Lands Department in the recent 5 financial years are shown in Annex 2.

The number of processed cases also includes some rejected and withdrawal cases. However, the numbers of these rejected and withdrawal cases have not been included in the above numbers which refer to approved cases.

(a)(c)  Since the Lands Department does not have the information required in item (a)(b), the relevant percentage cannot be provided.

(a)(d)  The cumulative numbers of small house applications received by each DLO of the Lands Department since the financial year of 2004-05 are shown in Annex 3.

(a)(e)  As regards "the number of cases in (d) with small house documents executed" required in item (a)(e), the Lands Department does not have the statistics on the number of small house applications executed among the cumulative number of applications received within each financial year.  The numbers of cases with small house documents executed by each DLO of the Lands Department in the recent five financial years are shown in Annex 4 (the figures are not the same as those provided in (a)(b) above as there is a time gap between approval of applications and execution of documents).

(a)(f)  Since the Lands Department does not have the information required in item (a)(e), the relevant percentage cannot be provided.

(b)  As there is no time limit for submission of small house applications, eligible indigenous villagers under the Small House Policy may submit their applications at any time.  As such, it is difficult to forecast the number of new applications to be received in the coming five years. Based on the data of the last five years, the Lands Department received on average about 1,500 new small house applications each year.

(c)  As at April 30, 2009, the Lands Department was processing 7,665 small house applications and 3,232 small house applications were pending processing.  Among these 10,897 cases, there were 5,585 small house applications submitted before 2006.  Of these 5,585 cases, many were cases being processed and only a small number of cases were pending processing.  The cases pending processing were mainly related to Village Expansion Areas now under discussion, and hence were not purely a matter of procedures of processing applications.

Ends/Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Issued at HKT 14:48

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