Page 52 - URA Annual Report 2021-22

OPERATING REVIEW
Adopting District-based Rehabilitation Approach on Work in Kowloon City
A small pilot area consisting of 46 buildings in Kowloon City was selected to test various planning-led and district-based rehabilitation initiatives and promotion strategies. Initial engagements were done with all targeted buildings in the pilot area to promote building rehabilitation and the uplifting of external walls of the buildings. Meanwhile, a new model of ‘joint property management’ for three-nil buildings (no management, no owners’ corporations (OCs) and no maintenance) in the pilot area was also initiated, working in collaboration with two property management organisations during the year.
Going forward, necessary assistance will be provided to promote the formation of OCs to facilitate the implementation of appropriate building rehabilitation measures to improve building condition. At the same time, the URA would encourage owners to set up a special fund for future maintenance and improvement works. The possibility of providing interest return to owners who make planned contribution to the special fund in the initial period would be explored.
Aerial view of the focus area in Kowloon City where URA will pilot the district- based rehabilitation approach. Comprehensive and targeted solutions will be proposed, along with appropriate subsidies to help owners organise building inspection, common area maintenance and external wall uplifting.
Building Rehabilitation Subsidy Schemes
To mitigate adverse impact brought by the pandemic on the rehabilitation works under various rehabilitation assistance schemes, e.g. unable to conduct physical meetings or general reluctance in allowing visits of consultants, the URA implemented different measures to assist owners in commencing the works as soon as possible. Amongst the measures taken included (i) issuing ‘Replacement Approvals-In-Principle (AIPs)’1 and ‘Conditional AIPs’2 to expedite application processing; (ii) arranging opening of tenders for consultants and contractors procurement via virtual meetings; and (iii) exploration of the feasibility for conducting online owners’ general meetings to overcome difficulties in arranging physical meetings.
In a video live broadcast of tender opening, owners monitor the whole process in the virtual meeting, during which the accountant presents the tenders and bidding prices to owners in front of the camera.
1 Replacement AIP (‘RAIP’): To avoid price escalation due to high market demand of works and services, all applications are prioritised into batches according to a set of risk determination criteria. Following the prioritisation order in each batch, applications submitted with required documents will be issued with AIPs and approached for assistance on rehabilitation works commencement. Nevertheless, there are ‘Sluggish Applications’ that fail to submit the required documents despite repeated reminders. To expedite the overall building rehabilitation process, applications in latter batches with required documents readily submitted will be issued RAIPs to replace the Sluggish Applications in earlier batches.
2 Conditional AIP (‘CAIP’): When the pre-determined number of applications to be approached in each batch cannot be met after issuing AIPs and RAIPs, the Sluggish Applications will be issued with CAIPs on the condition that the required documents are submitted within a prescribed period.
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