ENG-2005 — Page 278

232 Land, Public Works and Utilities

A feasibility study for the development of a Logistics Park nearby started in February 2005 and will be completed by 2006.

Northeast New Territories and Northwest New Territories New Development

Planning and development studies have established the feasibility of developing as New Development Areas in the Northeast New Territories 500 hectares in Kwu Tung North to house some 100 000 people and 200 hectares in Fanling North to house 80 000. In the Northwest New Territories, Hung Shui Kiu could accommodate a population of about 160 000 on a development area of about 450 hectares. The development of these New Development Areas will be triggered by future demand.

Lantau Development

A Concept Plan for Lantau has been drawn up by the Lantau Development Task Force to provide a coherent and balanced planning framework for the future development of the island. A few key development themes and proposals were identified and released for public consultation between the end November 2004 and the end February 2005. The response has been positive and a public consultation report summarising the public comments and the Administration's responses was published in November 2005. The Concept Plan will be revised where appropriate to take into account public comment.

Building Development

The Private Sector

Superstructure works on 158 building sites started during the year, involving a total gross floor area of 1.51 million square metres. A total of 785 buildings, with a total gross floor area of 2.22 million square metres, were completed at a total cost of $25.9 billion compared with 635 buildings, with a total gross floor area of 2.84 million square metres, built at a total cost of $34.5 billion in 2004.

Major construction works in progress at year-end included Skyplaza and Asia Airfreight Terminal 2 at Chek Lap Kok, Science Park Phase 2, the Tung Chung Cable Car project and the International Commerce Centre at MTR Kowloon Station.

Over the year, 26 965 reported cases of unauthorised building works (UBWs) were dealt with, 25 007 removal orders were issued and 40 365 UBWs were removed. Prosecutions of offenders for erecting UBWs or failing to comply with removal orders increased to 2 972, 1.74 times that of the previous year. These resulted in 1 877 convictions with fines totalling $8.04 million.

To tackle the problem of existing UBWs, the Buildings Department continued its 'blitz' clearance operations, demolishing in one fell swoop all external UBWS on a number of buildings in the same district. One thousand buildings were targeted for 'blitz' clearance in 2005. The programme to remove all illegal rooftop structures on 4 500 single staircase buildings continued to gather momentum. Illegal rooftop structures on 705 buildings were removed in 2005, compared with 402, 632, 713 and 714 in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 respectively.