5
Crown Rents.
12. The number of lots entered on the Hongkong & Kowloon Crown Rent Roll was 13,266 and the total Crown Rents amounted to $862,402.08 as compared with $827,720.66 in the previous year. The increases were in the urban areas and in Rural Building Lots. Table VII is a statement by localities.
13. The number of lots entered in the Village Crown Rent Roll as shown by localities in Table VIII was 1922 a decrease of four as compared with the previous year. Total Crown Rent was $1,272.55, a slight decrease as compared with the previous year.
14. During the year the number of Sections the Crown Rents of which were determined under the Crown Rents (Apportionment) Ordinance 1936, was 192 as compared with 21 in the previous year and the fees collected in this connection amounted to $2,572.00 against $279.00 for the previous year.
Kai Tak Airfield Extension.
15. The Airfield (Kai Tak) Extension and Reversion Ordin- ance 1948 came into force on the 16th July 1948, which measure provided a legal basis for the reversion to the Crown of the areas added to the Airfield as a result of demolition of buildings and dispossession of the occupants by the Japanese in 1942. Claims for compensation under the machinery of the Ordinance fall to be adjudicated upon by the Land Officer in respect of Kowloon and New Kowloon, and by the District Officer in respect of the New Territories other than New Kowloon. 552 claims to a total exceeding $3,500,000.00 require adjudication within Kowloon and New Kowloon, and before the close of the year claims in excess of $300,000.00 had been settled. The larger burden of the claims. will be presented in the forthcoming year, and it has been necessary to set up the machinery therefor beforehand.
GENERAL NOTE.
16. There has been an extremely heavy all round increase in the work of the Land Office in recent times as compared with the pre-war years, due in part to the marked expansion in normal business, but also to a variety of other causes, some of which it is appropriate to note here.
(a) The issue of "new title" in respect of a large number of
expiring Crown Leases.
The first group of the 75 years Crown Leases granted at different dates during the last century (i.e. Leases which were originally granted for one fixed term of 75 years) is now reaching the end of the leasehold term: Terms. for the grant of new Leases have already been arranged in many of these cases in the years which have elapsed since the reoccupation of the Colony but a very large number remains to be dealt with, being Leases which will expire in 1950 and 1951, and in the immediately