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6.3 Aggressively Streamline Approval

Pr ocesses and De v elopmen t
Procedures

As things stand, we are of the view that the land and housing
development process are simply too lengthy and time-consuming. For
private sector development, we reiterate our call for an in-depth review
and optimisation of the approval processes of the relevant government
departments.

In this regard, we are happy to see that the Development Bureau
has communicated with the industry to discuss a set of improvements
to the current approval mechanism. Some of the discussed proposals are
similar to what we have raised in our first Research Report, for example
a set of clearly pre-defined parameters (“Core Points”) to be included
in the approval of the “Design, Deposition and Height” submission and
a standardised format of “Master Layout Plan” in accordance with the
Practice Note. We hope that the government could actively strive to follow-
up with these proposals.

We also reiterate our concern with the existing mechanism of
land premium determination, as it has long been criticised that the said
process has slowed down private development and redevelopment. This
is especially the case when the “Pilot Scheme for Arbitration on Land
Premium” which was introduced back in October 2014 has made a total of
14 invitations, among which only one has undergone abitration, involving a
total of $39.3 million. As argued in our first Research Report, we suggest the
government to comprehensively review the said mechanism such that it
can reflect the impact on development costs in response to latest changes
in market situations and / or regulatory environment.

The approval mechanism aside, there are more structural issues
at play. Firstly, whilst multiple government departments have their own
spatial / geographical database about different aspects of the city, e.g.
the Planning Department has one that oversees land uses; the Highways
Department has one that supervises all roads; the Drainage Services
Department’s is concerned with our drainage system, etc. Yet, these digital
systems are not compatible with each other. As such, currently developers
are submitting their development plans for approval in hard copies,
whereas the government departments would comment on the physical
scanned copies of the submission. We have analysed this issue in-depth in
our Research Report on Innovation and Technology published in December
2015. 4

4. Please see pages 99 to 111 of “The Ecosystem of Innovation and Technology in Hong Kong”, Our Hong Kong Foundation.
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