ENG-1961 — Page 254

LAW, ORDER AND RECORDS

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To meet the needs of criminal lunatics and other offenders requiring psychiatric treatment, a Prisons Department mental hospital is also being planned.

No prison service can function efficiently without a contented and properly housed staff and during the year emphasis was placed on staff welfare. Building projects under construction included new staff quarters, classrooms and workshops at Cape Collinson Training Centre; a new mess, kitchen and recreation hall for warders at Stanley Prison; new quarters for warders and improved quarters for officers at Chi Ma Wan; and new quarters for warders at Tai Lam.

RECORDS

The Registrar General's Department comprises the Land Office, the Registries of Births and Deaths, Marriages, Companies, Trade Marks and Patents, the Offices of the Official Receiver in Bankruptcy and Company Winding Up, the Official Trustee, the Judicial Trustee, and the Official Solicitor in Lunacy.

Land Office. The Land Office is a public office for the registra- tion of deeds and other instruments affecting land. The system of registration is broadly similar to that in the Yorkshire Deeds Registries in England. The Land Registration Ordinance_provides that all deeds and instruments registered under it shall have priority according to their respective dates of registration, and also that deeds and instruments not registered (other than bona fide leases at rack rents for any term not exceeding three years) shall be absolutely null and void as against any subsequent bona fide purchaser or mortgagee for valuable consideration. Registration is therefore essential to the protection of title, but does not guarantee it. Deeds affecting land in Hong Kong, Kowloon, portions of New Kowloon, and a few lots in the New Territories are registered in the Land Office, Victoria; deeds affecting land in the rest of New Kowloon and all other lots in the New Territories are registered at the District Land Offices of the New Territories Administration. (Land tenure is described in Chapters 7 and 10).

The Land Office, besides being a Deeds Registry, advises the Government on, and does the Government conveyancing in, all matters relating to land, including the sale, grant and exchange of Crown land.