ENG-1963 — Page 24

REVIEW

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and again ‘land recovered from the sea, whether artificially or naturally, belongs to the Crown and the Crown is at liberty to dispose of it like any other land in the Colony'. Where marine lots were diminished in value or rendered useless for the purpose for which they were acquired by reclamation to the seaward, the solution proposed was to put up the reclaimed land as a new marine lot for sale by auction and allow the proprietor of the original lot to purchase it if he so wished at the highest price bid, or to claim compensation for any damage to the original lot. This was the principle followed in the case of the To Kwa Wan reclama- tion in East Kowloon where reclamation of the seabed in front of certain marine lots is now in hand.

In 1895 the Governor received permission to issue leases of lands in outlying districts for periods not exceeding five years without recourse to auction, and sale of land by private treaty in undeveloped parts of the New Territories was sanctioned in 1909 subject to certain stringent regulations. Private treaty grants were allowed in the case of schools at the market value of the site as fixed by the Government; in the event of the land ceasing to be used for educational purposes the site would revert to the Government. Grants for religious purposes were dealt with on their merits, the sanction of the Secretary of State being sought in each case. These very strict rules indicate how closely the principle of public competition has been guarded and the limited resources of Crown land husbanded over the years.

When the new industrial township of Kwun Tong was estab- lished in the mid 1950's it was originally argued that the land should be allocated directly to existing and potential industrialists at cost and without auction. The Government turned its back on such a proposition which would have been impossible to imple- ment equitably, but in an effort to meet the special claims of the industrialists for cheap land decided to sub-divide the first zone into five industrial classes or groups, the area of land in each group being roughly proportional to the anticipated demand for factories of that type. The lots were then sold at auction, the use of the land being restricted to the manufacture of the particular industrial products concerned. Although the classification was wide, it proved in practice not to be wide enough. Thus a purchaser of a site for one group found he could not manufacture some