HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL 31 October 1990
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de ons are generally supported by the community as being in the best overall interest of Hong Kong and the future Special Administrative Region. We have not taken upon ourselves an easy task but it must be done, and done well, if Hong Kong is to continue to prosper. We must now push ahead with the project.
Sir, with these remarks, I support the motion.
SECRETARY FOR PLANNING, ENVIRONMENT AND LANDS: Sir, a number of Members have commented on the Government's intention to apply statutory town planning measures to the rural parts of the New Territories. A. Bill to amend the Town Planning Ordinance will be introduced into this Council on 7 November 1990. I would like to take this opportunity to address a few points of principle.
The Town Planning Ordinance was passed more than 50 years ago to provide a statutory machinery for preparing, publishing and approving zoning plans for urban and potential urban areas. It has undergone minor amendment to build in a rudimentary planning permission system to provide for some variation of the plans, but it still remains essentially a framework for planning urban areas.
So all control of what goes where in rural and village areas is done through lease conditions and administrative means. In the case of agricultural land held under the Block Crown leases that is the majority of flat and usable land in the rural areas building can be controlled under the terms of the lease, but changes of user, apart from users which are offensive, noxious and so on, are entirely at the discretion of the owner. So any owner can effect, without seeking the agreement of anyone else, his neighbours, his local village head and least of all the Land Office, - a change to any user which does not involve building construction and which is not offensive or noxious or otherwise illegal. A recent survey showed that some 380 hectares of land in the New Territories have been converted to open storage uses, of which 45% are for storage of construction materials and equipment, 23% for motor vehicles and 13% for containers.
Largely through conversions of agricultural land to open storage uses the character of the north-western New Territories has completely changed in the last five years; the changes are spreading into Tai Po and could in due course also affect Sai Kung, particularly along new village roads.
Change on this scale shows that the demand for storage is indeed very strong and needs to be met somehow. (Government itself is putting out more land on tenancies for this purpose, but demand has far exceeded supplies of Crown land.) But in the same time, the change of environment which takes ́place both at the local level when, say, a car stripper or a container store starts