One of the more consequential proposals in Bill No. 143 lies in the revision of Article 99 of the Development Planning Act. At present, the provision allows the Executive Council to act where the amenity of an area is injured by the appearance or structural condition of any building or land — whether this be a garden, a vacant site, open land, or a location where works are taking or have taken place. In such circumstances, an enforcement notice may be served on the owner, occupier, or responsible person, requiring specified remedial steps.

Under the current law, sub-article (2) empowers the Minister, in consultation with the Executive Council, to make regulations providing for the demolition of property in disrepair or constituting a danger. These regulations may detail how the dangerous condition is certified and how the Authority is to proceed in carrying out such works. However, to date no such regulations have ever been enacted, rendering this demolition power effectively a dead letter. In practice, this means that the statutory provision exists on paper but lacks the operational machinery to be enforced as intended.

Bill No. 143 proposes to dispense with this ministerial-regulation model entirely, replacing it with a direct statutory power vested in the Executive Council. As amended, sub-article (2) would read:

“The Executive Council may, where a property is in a state of disrepair and, or constitutes a danger, by means of a notice, order that the said property be demolished by its owner or by the Authority, at the owner’s expense in accordance with the provisions of article 100:
Provided that an appeal from a notice issued in accordance with this article or the submission of an application for the retention on land of any buildings, works or development or to sanction the continuance of any use of the land to which the notice relates shall not stay the operation of the notice.”

Two legal ramifications are immediately apparent.

First, the removal of the regulatory step centralises demolition power directly in the hands of the Executive Council. This collapses the procedural distance between identifying a dangerous or dilapidated property and ordering its demolition, potentially streamlining enforcement but also eliminating an existing procedural safeguard. Second, the proposed proviso radically alters the effect of appeals: under the new text, the lodging of an appeal or a sanctioning application would not suspend the operation of the demolition notice. In practice, this means that the physical act of demolition could lawfully proceed — and be irreversible — even while an appeal is pending.

If adopted without modification, the amended Article 99 would equip the Executive Council with a more immediate and less procedurally encumbered demolition power, while narrowing the protective effect of pending appeals. The intended outcome is evidently a more decisive enforcement framework; the legal risk lies in whether such decisiveness will withstand scrutiny under principles of proportionality, due process, and effective judicial protection.