Data on Appeal Rates for All HDB Schemes

11 Mr Liang Eng Hwa asked the Minister for National Development for each year in the last five years (a) what is the number of appeals that HDB has received under all its schemes; (b) how many appeals have been successful; and (c) whether HDB reviews its schemes and policies periodically to reduce the appeal case load.

The Senior Minister of State for National Development (Ms Sim Ann) (for the Minister for National Development): Sir, from 2019 to 2023, the Housing and Development Board (HDB) received an annual average of around 854,000 pieces of correspondence, which include appeals, feedback and enquiries from members of the public. Appeals comprise a subset of these, averaging around 177,000 appeals per year. These appeals spanned a wide range of issues, such as eligibility for purchase of HDB flats, HDB housing loans and housing grants, housing maintenance issues, public rental housing and parking offences.

HDB takes into consideration the unique circumstances of each case when assessing appeals, and the outcome of each appeal will depend on their individual merits. The Ministry of National Development (MND) and HDB regularly review our housing policies and schemes to ensure that we cater to the evolving needs and aspirations of Singaporean households, and to meet national objectives.

Mr Speaker: Mr Liang.

Mr Liang Eng Hwa (Bukit Panjang): Sir, as Members of Parliament, we do send a large number of appeals to HDB, on behalf of residents. For me, in particular, I think they account for up to half the total appeals that I send. So, the question is whether, on one side for the HDB as an organisation, given the case load, are HDB staff spending a disproportionate amount of time handling appeals, which could have otherwise been spent, maybe on the ground, to solve other problems.

While on the other side, the residents are having to wait for weeks or months for HDB to respond. For someone who wants to buy a flat, to withdraw his or her name from a parent's flat, may take weeks or months, just to appeal.

So, can I ask the Senior Minister of State, is this a case where the schemes are structured just too tightly and are less flexible, resulting in high numbers of appeals, and whether should HDB review the schemes to reduce their appeals. For the newer schemes, whether it is possible to design these with the aim to reduce the likelihood of appeals.

Ms Sim Ann: I thank the Member for his concern about the workload in HDB and, indeed, we are constantly looking for ways to streamline our officers' workload, so that their time can be spent more productively in serving Singaporeans.

I believe the Member's interests will be in housing-related appeals, so I should add that in the numbers that I have shared with him just now, it includes appeals for parking related offences, which constitute approximately about 40% of the appeal load. Housing-related appeals would be the bulk of the remainder. And we will be reviewing our schemes quite regularly, to make sure that they meet the evolving needs of Singaporeans.

That said, sometimes we do receive appeals where actually there is already a very clear framework. I will give an example of residents or members of the public appealing to ask for priority allocation of a Build-To-Order (BTO) flat. I think this is quite familiar to Members of this House. We have a very clear framework for the application of BTO; there is a ballot.

Nonetheless, there will be members of the public who feel that they should get priority allocation of a flat or even direct allocation of a flat. And much as we already have a framework in place, if such an appeal comes, we will duly look at it and also reply. So, that constitutes some of the volume. There are also cases where, there are changing circumstances of the individual appellant, for instance, their financial circumstances. In fact, I believe, the question just now posed by Mr Dennis Tan relates to this. For deserving cases, we will look at these appeals and provide an answer accordingly.

So, I think outside of these cases where either, there is already a framework and the members of the public know it but they want to appeal nonetheless; or cases where because of changing circumstances, we do need the appeals process in order to ensure that the outcome is fair for the member of the public; we will, nonetheless, continue to review and streamline our schemes wherever possible.