The court also called on the government to consult with the public again, arguing that such an exercise hadn’t been carried out properly or fairly.
The ruling comes as a blow to the government that plans to build 12,000 public housing units on part of the Fanling Golf Course, the city’s oldest, which was built on government-owned land. The proposal has drawn criticism from elites who reasoned it would affect the course’s appeal as a meeting place for business leaders.
The government first introduced the idea to take back part of the site in 2019 to help solve the city’s housing crisis as the property market was overheated. One advantage of the plan is that building on government-owned land avoids problems that would arise from removing and rehousing existing residents on private land.
