News Releases

URA GIVES LANDOWNERS AND ARCHITECTS MORE FLEXIBILITY TO PLAN AND DESIGN ANCILLARY STRUCTURES WITHIN THE GREEN BUFFER

1. The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) has simplified the guidelines for the construction of minor structures to give landowners and architects more flexibility in planning and designing them.

2. These minor or ancillary structures include guardhouses/sentry posts, bin points and meter compartments built against the boundary wall facing a road.

3. The relaxation of guidelines on ancillary structures is part of URA's continuous efforts to simplify rules and guidelines to facilitate development and to be flexible and responsive to the needs of the public.

   Existing vs new guidelines

4. Currently, these structures must be of a certain size or height before they are allowed to be built against the boundary wall facing a road.

5. These specific requirements are now replaced by a simplified total frontage limit of 3.0 m or 25% of the available road frontage, whichever is greater, to allow landowners the flexibilty to plan and design the minor structures to suit their needs.

6. The height of a bin point is also streamlined from 1.2 m to 1.8 m to match the height of the boundary wall while the height of a guardhouse/sentry post is increased from 2.4 m to 2.6 m in line with the building regulations. (See table at Annex A).

7. Landowners can now have the flexibility to arrange these minor structures as individual structures or design one combined structure to accommodate a guardhouse, bin point and meter compartment. In either arrangement, the total width of the structures must not be more than 3.0 m or 25% of the available road frontage, whichever is greater.(See Annex B)

8. These structures cannot be used for other purposes as they are located within the green buffer for which only certain minor structures are allowed. The green buffer refers to the area within a certain distance from the road to be kept for planting.