TNAG-0808-FCO40-1013-Use-of-Crown-lands-relinquished-by-Ministry-of-Defence-in-Ho-1978 — Page 169

CODE IS. 77

CONFIDENTIAL

Mr McLaren

FUTURE OF VICTORIA BARRACKS

Keference

HKK 365/1

"RECEIVED IN REGISTRY NO. 51

09 JUN 1978

DESK OF DER INDEX

REGISTRY

Action Taken

مله

8

#

in Hong

1. You should be aware of a row that Kong over the future of the Victoria Barracks, which are shortly to be vacated by the British Forces and released to the Hong Kong Government under the Defence Costs Agreement (DCA). This is, of course, extremely valuable land and its release to the Government was an important part of their compensation for the considerable extra costs they were landed with under the DCA. There are those in Hong Kong, including an influential group of unofficials in ExCo and LegCo, who believe the Government should seek to derive the maximum economic benefit from the site by making it available for commercial and residential building.

2.

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In early 1977, the Governor appointed a special planning committee to consider the future of the site. Their original proposals, published for public comment in June 1977, envisaged building on the majority of the site. Less than 40% would have been left as open space. This provoked a considerable public outcry, and as a result the committee came up with revised planning proposals, under which nearly 80% of the site would be left as open space. The Government however felt that this went too far, particularly since the committee's terms of reference included a requirement to produce proposals that would show "a reasonable return to public revenue": whereas the original proposals would have given a net revenue return of HK $ 1,450m, the revised proposals would give only HK $ 648m. The Government Town Planner was therefore instructed to produce alternative proposals: these will leave about 60% of the site as open space, and produce a revenue return of between $ 893 and $1,105m (this latter figure assumes that the revised plan will make it possible for the Government to release another site elsewhere, though there is some doubt about the valuation of this).

3. A fourth set of proposals was produced by a sub-commitee of UMELCO, set up following an initial discussion in ExCo last November of the revised Planning Committee report. This would involve taking no decision at this stage on the future use of the majority of the site. Ultimately, however, the sub-committee would like to see the land released for high class private residential development, in order to bring in maximum revenue to the Government.

4.

These various proposals are set out in ExCo memorandum XCC (78) 50 at folio 7 below. This memorandum was considered at an ExCo meeting on 16 May, when the Council decided to adopt a slightly amended version of the Government Town Planning proposals.

As far as I am aware, this decision has not yet been made public, though the Council also decided that a draft press release should now be prepared, and the decision will presumably therefore be announced shortly.

5. Among the people who have been taking a close interest in this subject are the Hong Kong Heritage Society, a recently formed group dedicated to the conservation of Hong Kong's historic landmarks. They are a small, vocal and

CONFIDENTIAL

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