Registrar-Generals-Department-Annual-report-1956-1957 — Page 38

Land.

PART IX

NEW LEGISLATION

53. The Land Transactions (Enemy Occupation) (Amend- ment) Ordinance, 1956, amended Subsection 2 of Section 3 of the principal Ordinance by deleting the provisions limiting the period during which the "green ink" entries in the Land Office Registers are operative. The effect of this is to allow the green ink entries, which record transactions in land made during the Japanese Occupation of the Colony, to remain on the Registers indefinitely. Section 4 of the principal Ordinance, which requires the Land Officer to delete green ink entries from the Registers at the expiration of the period of limitation, becomes unnecessary and is repealed by Section 3.

54. The Town Planning (Amendment) Ordinance, 1956, amended Section 10 of the principal Ordinance by deleting the provision contained therein which required the Land Officer to make a note of every approved plan in the Land Office Registers relating to any parcel of land affected thereby, and substituting for this requirement a provision that a notice is to be displayed in the Land Office calling the attention of members of the public to the existence of approved plans.

55. The Law of Property (Enforcement of Covenants) Ordinance, 1956, made provision for the mutual enforcement of covenants and agreements relating to the use, maintenance, repair, insurance or management of buildings divided into flats or other separately occupied premises or relating to the support, demolition or rebuilding thereof. The inordinately heavy increase in recent years in building development generally in Hong Kong, and in particular the very large number of blocks of flats which have been erected, has brought into prominence the question of how far covenants and agreements of this kind entered into between the original owners of such flats will be enforceable in future years between those sub- sequently becoming owners thereof, there being some doubt as to the extent to which the burden of certain types of covenants

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