Wang Chau development explained

(September 15, 2016)

Secretary for Transport & Housing Prof Anthony Cheung and Secretary for Development Paul Chan have met with Legislative Council members-elect Eddie Chu and Prof Edward Yiu today to discuss housing issues and matters relating to the development of Wang Chau, Yuen Long.

Prof Cheung told reporters after the meeting that the Government has never made any guarantee or commitment, as alleged in the media, that there would be no further phases of development of Wang Chau and stressed that the second and third phases are still on the drawing board.

He pointed out that since 2012 when a consultancy study was conducted for the development, it was already divided into three phases.

However, the Government is facing many challenges and needs to deal with various issues, including the impact on the environmental and traffic, in bringing forward the subsequent phases of the development, he added.

Prof Cheung said before the Wang Chau development plan was formally proposed at the District Council, Government officials have, through informal channels, contacted local representatives such as the District Council and Rural Committee chairman, to gauge the preliminary views of the local community.

He explained that such contacts are part of the normal procedures in public housing development projects for which no large-scale consultation exercise are conducted.

Once the development plans are finalised, the public, especially people affected by the development, will have the chance to express their opinions, he added.

Prof Cheung stressed that such informal contacts are not “collusion”.

As the shortage in housing and land supply is acute, the Government is taking a multi-pronged approach to push forward different initiatives at the same time, Mr Chan said.

The Government is re-zoning greenbelt sites and pushing very hard on the development of brownfield sites at the same time, he said.

Mr Chan pointed out that many issues need to be tackled for brownfield sites as they are often occupied by different business operations and reprovisioning is necessary.

He also said the Government wishes to have more frank exchanges with Legislative Council members to discuss ways to solve Hong Kong’s housing problem.

As requested by the two legislators-elect, the Government later passed them a copy of the contents table of the 16 reports under the feasibility study for the Wang Chau development project.

It will put together the appropriate contents of the study for the public’s reference.

Download Video

Display Transcript

Secretary for Transport & Housing Prof Anthony Cheung:
Informal contact, it could be in a form of sit-down meeting, or it could be in a form... I am talking about in general, not the Wang Chau case. I am yet to find out from my colleagues what actually happened in terms of the informal contact. But informal discussion, informal contact, by definition means it is informal and therefore it could take a shape of various forms. I mean as Secretary, as I said earlier, when I had breakfast with a Legco member, that is informal contact as well, I do not have a practice of making notes of such meetings, at breakfast meetings. But of course if it is a less informal interaction, maybe there would be some brief notes I prepared. In this case, I have asked my Housing Department colleagues to check and see whether we have any record of such contacts.

I noticed yesterday there was an allegation that some senior government officials made a guarantee that there would not be further phases of development of Wang Chau. Yesterday I have checked with my relevant colleagues in the Housing Department and the Transport & Housing Bureau. There is no such case. My colleagues have never made any such alleged guarantee or commitment. As far as the bureau is concerned, the second and third phases of Wang Chau development are still on our drawing board. Of course we realise the challenges we are facing. How do we deal with the brownfield operations, how do we deal with various environmental and traffic impact issues, so we have to be ready that in terms of how to deal with these issues before we take forward the second and the third phase of the development.

Secretary for Development Paul Chan:
As you know the shortage in housing and land supply is indeed very acute. We cannot afford doing things in sequence. So what we are doing at the moment as previously announced is a multi-pronged approach. So what we have been doing is to try to push different initiatives at the same time. On one hand, you have seen us re-zoning different sites including greenbelt sites. On the other hand, we are also pushing very hard on brownfield sites. But for brownfield sites as you may notice, there are a lot of different issues that need to be tackled. For example, this brownfield site is not vacant site. There are port back-up operations, recycle workshops, car repair and maintenance workshops, and they offer quite a lot of employment particularly for those people living in the area. So when we deal with the brownfield sites, we have to at the same time tackle the issue of reprovisioning.