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REVIEW
in November 1900, provides for the compulsory acquisition of land required for a public purpose. For many years all private land required for Government projects has been obtained under the provisions of this Ordinance. In such cases the compensation pay- able is decided by a Resumption Compensation Board consisting of a chairman appointed by the Chief Justice and two members, one representing the lessees whose land is affected and one appointed by the Government. Since the war some 184 such Resumption Compensation Boards have been set up to hear claims and make awards. In order to speed up acquisition of land to be resumed, the Government normally makes an offer of compensa- tion to lessees for the voluntary surrender of their land and in many cases this is accepted without waiting for a board to arbitrate. In parts of the New Territories a land exchange may be offered instead of cash compensation. During the past 10 years some 100 acres of land have been acquired for public purposes in the urban area and 1,188 acres have been acquired in the New Territories, 190 acres by resumption and 998 by surrender.
Land for street widening has for many years been obtained by negotiation as and when redevelopment takes place. Improvement lines are first established for all streets which it is intended should be widened and, when any particular property is redeveloped, the lessee is required to set his building back to the new line, the strip in front being surrendered to the Crown either in exchange for cash or for à building concession of equal value. By this means the cost of street widening is kept low since no cash payment has to be made for buildings; social disturbance is also minimized. However, the practice has led to some strange results. Since widening only takes place on redevelopment it is very slow and occurs irregularly and piecemeal, the full advantage only being realized when the last building in a street is redeveloped. Thus Queen's Road East, which has been subject to a 60 foot widening and realignment scheme for the last 30 years, is still far from complete since a high proportion of the buildings affected have not yet been redeveloped. Similarly, in Queen's Road Central, which has been subject for many years to a scheme involving the raising of levels, pedestrians have still to go up and down steps when using the side-walks due to some properties not yet having been redeveloped to the appropriate higher level.
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