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Night Recap - May 21, 2026
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The High Court on Monday ruled in favor of the Hong Kong Golf Club regarding a judicial review of the Fanling Golf Course development plan, overturning the Environmental Protection Department's (EPD) conditional approval of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) report.
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Judge Russell Coleman has mandated that the EIA report be returned for public re-consultation. It was ruled that the EPD's decision was flawed, requiring a thorough public consultation process before moving forward.
The judgment wrote that the judicial review application by the Club is not "academic" as stated by the authorities, and emphasized that the EIA process over the project is required.
It also stated that the Director of Environmental Protection to accept and approve categorizing the adverse impact on the Old Course -- which the Judge described as "a place of obvious and recognized cultural and significance" -- as "undetermined" in the EIA report is irrational and in breach of the requirements under the relevant Study Brief and Technical Memorandum to be complied.
The government took back 32 hectares of land on the golf course last year and planned to use 9.5 hectares to develop public housing.
The golf club raised concerns about inaccuracies in the EIA, stating that it failed to comply with the requirements of technical memoranda and is filled with errors. For instance, it states there are 1 and 38 species of bats moths in the area, while the club asserts there should be 15 and at least 729 respectively. Additionally, the report did not document 80 old trees in the Register of Old and Valuable Trees, nor did it present a proper estimation of the ecological damage to bats, moths, and Chinese water pines in the area.
The club argued that the EPD lacked proper public consultation. It filed for judicial review last July and the court decided to grant an interim stay of the decision of the Director of Environmental Protection to approve the EIA report back in May 2023.
