Hong Kong Cadastral Survey System: A comparison and its implementation


  1. Hong Kong system

    2. Hundred and fifty years ago, Hong Kong has long adopted a general boundary with fairly low survey accuracy. The first and the only one comprehensive boundary survey - Demarcation District (DD) Survey for the purpose of tax assessment was carried out in the New Territories (NT) around 1905. Nevertheless, existing law and initial survey is not to be progressively changed towards nowadays standard. DD Sheet attached to the Block Government Lease (BGL) until now is still treated as one of the legal documents for correlating the boundary of land parcels in the NT. The survey provided evidences as to the most probable position of the boundary. Upon the dis-establishment of the Registrar General's Department, Land Registry (LR) has formed as the first trading fund department, which currently governs by Land Registration Ordinance. It facilitates land registration of deeds and search services of conveyancing in Hong Kong.

    Definition of newly granted lots boundary in Hong Kong is performed by the Survey and Mapping Office (SMO) of Lands Department. SMO is responsible for the survey of land allocation, maintenance of land records, maintenance of geodetic control network, survey revision, advises on land boundary matters and sales of geo-spatial products. The Computerized Land Information System (CLIS) was established to convert the 1:1,000 paper maps into digital base information. There are considerable and useful mapping data, which vary in quality and availability. There are about 3,000 1:1,000 basic survey sheets with topographic features, which provide the updated information frequently. Hong Kong dues with boundary matters under common law tradition; land boundary is a right recorded in a lease and land boundary rights are subjected to various overriding interests, e.g. adverse possession rights, estoppels, etc. Ordinances of institutions in Hong Kong do contain land boundary description [Tang, 2001, p.45]. The usual boundary description is by ways of registered plan. Some of the land administration ordinances do contain clauses of boundary survey, but they are seldom used by the government [Tang, 2001, p.46].

    There is no legislation enforceable to govern the boundary survey, except the Land Survey Ordinance (LSO, Cap. 473) only deals with subdivision survey since 1996. Its aim is to control the standards of land boundary surveys for land subdivision. Under this, instruments effecting the division of land parcels delivered to the LR for registration must be accompanied by land boundary plans prepared and certified by Authorized Land Surveyors (ALSs).

    Table.1 illustrates a summary of cadastral survey systems among three regions. For more details, Table 2 shows the chronological sequences of cadastral histories for reference (See page 15).

    Table.1 Summary of Cadastral Survey System among three region
        South Africa Singapore Hong Kong
    1 Population About 40 million About 7 million About 7 million
    2 Land Registration Deeds
    • Deeds (1.7%)

    • Titles (98.3%)
    		 Deeds
    Its Services Deeds Offices, Department of Land Affairs Singapore Land Registry, Singapore Land Authority Hong Kong Land Registry Trading Fund
    Its Legislation Deeds Registries Act No. 37 of 1997
    • Registration of Deeds Act (Cap. 269) in 1887

    • Land Titles Act (Cap. 157) in 1993
    		 Land Registration Ordinance (Cap. 128) in 1884
    3 Land Boundary Survey Services Surveyor General Offices, Department of Land Affairs Survey Department, Singapore Land Authority Survey and Mapping Office, Lands Department
    Survey Coverage (Completeness)
    • 50% coverage by computerized maps in digital form

    • 30% coverage by coordinated maps

    • 20% total coverage in any form
    		 100% coverage by computerized maps in digital form 100% coverage by computerized maps in digital form
    Its Legislation Land Survey Act No. 8 of 1997
    • Revised Boundaries and Survey Maps Act (Cap. 25) in 1998

    • Land Surveyors Act (Cap. 156) in 1991
    • No survey law at all

    • Subdivision survey: Land Survey Ordinance (Cap. 473) in 1996
    4 Significant Improvement
    • Recent Land Reform in 1994 revised the well-secured land survey act

    • GPS control network applied throughout the territory
    • A Coordinated Cadastre implemented into the Boundaries and Survey Maps Act

    • A Compulsory Titles Conversion
    • Three-stage Integrated Survey Network project
    • GPS 2000 network to be established in the near future

      • Land Titles Bill proposed
    5 Other Comments
    • Low land value and development potential

    • Little attention in land security to general public due to expensive and lengthy registration
    		  
    • No real survey law existed, boundary defined subject to the best available evidence

    • Proposed bill does not touch any boundary extent in the registration
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