Ordinance to require the owner to re-develop the site of a demolished building. During the year re-development orders were registered in 216 cases making a total of 752 since the Ordinance was passed in 1963.
10. The foregoing is then the background to the Land Office statistics for the year, the salient features of which, summarised from the details given in Part II and the relevant Tables, are as follows. The number of instruments of all categories registered was 49,582, only 193 short of the record set up in 1964-65. These included 693 assign- ments of whole properties, 20,162 assignments of units in buildings, 8,293 mortgages and 7,688 agreements for sale and purchase. The grand total of considerations expressed in all instruments was $2,695m., a figure exceeded only three times before. Declines in aggregate considerations were recorded in all categories except reassignments which rose from $469m. in 1965-66 to nearly $584m. Building mort- gages totalled only $42m., as compared with $362m. only two years before. The decline in activity in certain sections of the Land Office enabled good progress to be made in the Crown lease section, and the total of 382 issued was the highest for any post-war year. 584 lots or sections were surrendered to the Crown, and 39 lots re-entered for breach of the lease conditions. The number of landowners (excluding mortgagees) rose by a healthy 17,308 over the previous year to the impressive total of 130,878.
11. Before leaving the Land Office, reference must be made to the new arrangements concerning the land holdings of the armed services announced by H.E. the Governor in a broadcast to the people of the Colony on 20th December 1966 with regard to the Colony's defence contribution to the U.K. Government. Under these arrangements the old Military Lands Account procedure established in the 1890s has been superseded by a new arrangement under which the armed services have agreed to return to the Hong Kong Government any land held by them free of charge as soon as it is no longer required for purposes in connexion with the defence of the Colony, and the Government has agreed to provide land free to the armed services when it agrees the land is needed. The Military Lands Account had almost since its inception been a source of much argument because the procedure involved the Government's being credited with the value of land provided for the services as at the date of provision and debited with the value at the date of surrender. Since the value of land always tends to rise in terms of money over a period of years, and this tendency has been accentuated in Hong Kong where with the ever-rising
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