TNAG-0670-FCO40-819-Policy-of-Government-of-Hong-Kong-on-land-in-New-Territories-1977 — Page 24

C.S. 166

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relating to it, the Finance Committee on 19th March 1969 agreed that Government should itself build the new village houses and grant them without premium or compensation in exchange for the surrender of the old houses. It also approved that certain removal expenses should be paid. The first villages to be removed under this new policy were Hoi Pa (Stage I) and Ham Tin in Tsuen Wan. The project which was undertaken in 1971/72 consisted of 99 two-storey houses and a single storey Chi Tong. Each house had a floor area of about 650 square feet and was designed to allow villagers to alter the building to incor- porate a cockloft which became in effect a third storey.

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In 1975 it became necessary to remove Sham Tseng village urgently to allow the construction of a viaduct for the Tsuen Mun Road. Under the Buildings Ordinance (Application to the New Territories) Regulations it is lawful to build houses of three storeys with a maximum height of 25 feet and a ground area of 700 square feet, without com- plying with the formalities of the Buildings Ordinance, and this is the standard of village house now being widely constructed. The Secretary for the New Territories therefore advised that the Sham Tseng villagers would justifiably request a change in the design of their houses to complete the cockloft floor in the previous design to create an additional floor and so bring them up to the permitted standard. This modification was incorporated in the contract for the new Sham Tseng village houses and for houses in Wo Yi Hop Road, Tsuen Wan required for Tsuen Wan and Kwai Chung village removals. Funds provided in the project votes were adequate to meet this change and, for this reason and because of the extreme urgency to clear the houses, no separate reference to the Executive Council or the Finance Committee was made at that time. Moreover, as no layout plan for urban develop- ment in Sham Tseng was prepared until 1961, some post-war village houses had been permitted. In these circumstances it would have been clearly inequitable not to offer village removal terms to those with post-war grants. New houses were accordingly granted to the owners of such lots. In these cases the entitlement was based on one new house for a developed house lot varying between 500 and 640 square feet.

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A summary of the present standards of provision for village removals derived from the past removals is at Part I of the Annex.

Future village removals

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A further nine villages have to be removed in the near future and others will have to be removed in later stages of the development of the new towns and market towns of the New Territories.

In many cases

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