【Acrylic Painting by Dennis Tang】
(Paintings and Photos may not be relevant to the incident described)
The Melhado case is one of the most famous judicial review cases regarding the town planning issue in the New Territories (NT).
In the early 1980s, many farmland in the NT were abandoned and used for open storage of containers, building materials and scrap vehicles, etc. It caused a lot of environmental problems and triggered the government’s action to stop such uses of agricultural land in the NT. The land had been included in a Block Crown Lease granted in 1905. In the lease the use of each lot was described and it was argued that there was an implied covenant in the lease against use of the land for any purpose other than that for which it was used at the time the Crown lease was granted.
The decision of the Court of Appeal is that the word “agricultural land” in the Block Crown lease is “descriptive” only and has no effect on the “restriction” of land use. Accordingly, if the Government wants to resume these lands for development, it needs to pay higher compensation. This case further increases the difficulty of solving the problems of land shortage and housing development in Hong Kong.
