Hong Kong land authority resumes accepting indigenous applications for private land exchange in controversial small-house policy
- Lands Department move follows a landmark ruling on Ding rights
- Policy of land exchange for home building criticised by many as unfair
The move by the Lands Department followed a High Court ruling on April 8 that the male villagers’ traditional right to build three-storey homes in the New Territories was constitutional and lawful – just not on government land. The court ruled that the city’s Development Bureau had until May 28 to appeal the ruling.
As it stands, an eligible villager with a plot of land deemed unsuitable for building a home can apply to the Lands Department to exchange it for private or government land.
Those without land are eligible to ask the government to sell them one of the plots of public land that had been set aside for “village-type development” at discounted prices.
After the April 8 court ruling, the Lands Department, which is under the Development Bureau, stopped accepting applications from those who needed to swap or buy lands to build the so-called small housesand suspended the applications already being processed.
But on April 29, the last day to make supplementary submissions, the Development Bureau wrote to the High Court that some of the land exchanges involved only the private land of the applicant.