Court rejects appeal on Fanling Golf Course assessment

The Court of Appeal has dismissed the government’s appeal against a High Court ruling in 2024 that quashed the environmental approval for a public housing development on part of the Fanling Golf Course. Back in 2023, the government had taken back 32 hectares of the 172-hectare golf course upon expiry of a land lease. It had planned to develop 9.5 hectares of the resumed site for into 12,000 public flats. Handing down the verdict on Monday, a three-judge panel led by Chief Judge Jeremy Poon upheld the Court of First Instance's decision, which concluded that the Director of Environmental Protection had not acted in accordance with the law in approving the project's environmental impact assessment (EIA) report. The government had contended that the judicial review had become "academic", pointing to its June 2023 amendment to the Environmental Impact Assessment Ordinance which removed the project from the list of designated developments requiring such assessments. The judges, however, determined that the approval remained a live issue, as the EIA report could still be relied upon for other purposes under the ordinance. In upholding the lower court's findings, the judges observed that t