Will Tai Po fire reforms wipe out collusion in Hong Kong’s building maintenance industry?

A raft of reforms to overhaul Hong Kong’s building maintenance sector has been hailed as a bold first step in tackling bid-rigging and other deep-rooted problems, but observers said its success would depend on the determination and persistence to implement them to restore public trust.

They said the reforms signalled a departure from the government’s long-standing reliance on the self-discipline of industry professionals, but highlighted a notable absence of measures to tackle falsified authorisation letters and blacklist unscrupulous contractors via a transparent system.

Among the measures announced by the government on Thursday, several directly addressed calls from professional groups and lawmakers. These included setting up an independent body to support homeowners in renovation projects and criminalising bid-rigging. Other measures involve legal reforms and enhancements of oversight in the industry.

The government also finally addressed the question of political accountability that had lingered for 11 months after the deadly Tai Po fire, which claimed 168 lives. Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho Wing-yin resigned to take political responsibility, while authorities vowed to probe around 50 civil servants over potential administrative lapses within three months.

Lau Siu-kai, a consultant to the semi-official Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies think tank, said the array of measures reflected the government’s determination to kick-start a “comprehensive reform” targeting deep-seated, long-ignored problems arising from the city’s ageing buildings.

Citing the late David Akers-Jones, chief secretary during the colonial era in the 1980s, Lau said the veteran politician had long warned of this critical challenge in governance and called on the authorities to “bite the bullet” in overhauling urban renewal and housing policies.

“[These initiatives] would benefit the entire society to confront a hidden peril in Hong Kong which could become a major governance risk,” he said. “They are broader and more important than who and how many people stepped down to be held accountable.”

Lau acknowledged that execution would not be easy, considering the long-existing bureaucratic structure and mindsets of civil servants. He believed that internal probes into dozens of officials would achieve a deterrent effect, pressuring the civil service to strengthen oversight, change its culture, and become more vigilant.

Executive councillor Ronny Tong Ka-wah said the reforms signalled a “paradigm shift” in the government stance on regulatory oversight. He explained that the city’s building maintenance system was inherited from the colonial era, which heavily relied on the industry’s self-discipline to avoid transferring the financial burden to public coffers.

“The current reforms are bold in a way that they would lead to more proactive supervision of the professionals,” said Tong, who advises Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu on the Executive Council, the top decision-making body.

Tong, also a senior counsel, acknowledged that many crimes, including bid-rigging, would remain notoriously difficult to detect, but praised the government’s plan to bring the offence under the Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance, which he said would strengthen enforcement capabilities.

Comparing Hong Kong’s response with Britain’s handling of the Grenfell Tower disaster, Tong argued that the city’s reforms were more aggressive. He pointed to the replacement of the housing minister by a more senior official, Deputy Financial Secretary Michael Wong Wai-lun, arguing that Wong could perform a better oversight role in the system overhaul.

In the wake of the UK fire that killed 72 people in 2017, the government conducted an inquiry in two phases and published its final report in 2024, resulting in tougher regulatory oversight and a more centralised system in implementing fire safety measures.

However, as of this September’s official progress update, nearly half of the 61 recommendations remained outstanding and “in progress”, including closing legal loopholes in the Building Safety Act.

Carmen Lai, chairman of the building surveying division of the Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors, welcomed the establishment of the new body to take over the role of the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) in supporting homeowners undertaking building maintenance works.

She said it aligned with the institute’s advocacy for active government intervention in the market, adding that its success would depend on whether the new body could tactfully consolidate resources and work across different departments.

“In the past, support services, subsidies and approval processes were scattered across multiple entities, making it difficult to track down responsibilities of contractors,” she said. “Bringing everything into a single agency will ensure that support is properly coordinated,” Lai said.

Regarding the plan to criminalise bid-rigging, Lai said the crackdown’s success would depend on providing clear, legal definitions of what constituted bid-rigging and granting the new body enhanced data collection powers to expose hidden criminal networks.

Despite the comprehensive package, lawmaker Christine Fong Kwok-shan noted that some measures were still lacking. She urged the government to address the issue of forged authorisation letters used to manipulate voting in owners’ corporations.

She also called for a formal self-reporting mechanism and the establishment of a “blacklist” to prevent bad actors, who often have complex triad-linked backgrounds, from entering the bidding market.

Meanwhile, she urged the government to implement measures in a timely manner with clear priorities.

Pointing to the scale of the challenge, she noted that Hong Kong currently has 25,000 private buildings aged 30 years or above, with roughly 600 receiving mandatory maintenance orders each year.

“Given the massive workload, we can no longer rely solely on the URA as we did in the past. The new body must be adequately staffed to oversee actors from the very beginning of a project to its completion,” she said.

“I’ve received plenty of residents’ inquiries about building maintenance. Some agreed that they should hold off projects until the new body is fully operational to ensure they are well supported … The government needs to act fast.”