Illegal works up sixfold on land in New Territories

Cases of unauthorised development in the New Territories have risen sixfold in the past 15 years, according to Planning Department figures.

The latest figures presented to the Town Planning Board yesterday showed that last year the department issued 3,987 statutory notices to landowners or occupants concerning illegal developments in rural areas of the New Territories, six times the number issued in 1995.

Of the notices issued last year, about 300 were 'reinstatement notices'. These are the strictest of the three types the department can issue and require the landlord or occupant to restore the land to its previous state. The first type is an enforcement order. The second requires unauthorised development work to be halted.

Last year, the department required about 20 hectares of land that had been developed without authorisation to be reinstated, compared with the annual average of only three hectares between 1995 and 1999.

Of the illegal developments, over half involved the land being used for storage, workshops and parking. The department said there had been an increase of larger-scale, more complex unauthorised developments in recent years, such as land and pond filling and columbariums being built.

Some of last year's notices covered cases reported to the government, including one in Ho Sheung Heung in Sheung Shui, in which landfill - a mix of construction waste as well as coffin and tombstone rubble from a public cemetery - was dumped on farmland.