Speech by SMS Sim Ann at the Committee of Supply Debate
Mar 5, 2025
Co-Creating Vibrant Neighbourhoods: Transforming and Enhancing Our Living Spaces and Communities for Tomorrow
Introduction
Mr Chairman, I thank Members for their cuts.
I will speak on 4 areas:
First, maintaining affordable cooked food options in the neighbourhood;
Second, making physical enhancements to our neighbourhoods to take care of the needs of more users;
Third, improving the delivery of municipal services; and
Lastly, resolving complex community challenges.
Expanding affordable dining: Budget meals in every neighbourhood
Let me first update on our efforts to ensure affordable cooked food options in our estates.
Mr Chong Kee Hiong and Mr Henry Kwek will be pleased to hear that our Budget Meal initiative has made good progress since it was announced in Mar 2023.
As of Jan 2025, more than 60% of 397 HDB-rental coffeeshops and about 30% of 403 privately-owned HDB coffeeshops now offer budget meals.
This means budget meals can now be found at many more heartland locations throughout the island. If we were to draw a radius of 400m - or about 5 to 10 minutes walking distance – around every coffeeshop offering budget meals, more than 80% of HDB flats would be covered.
Credit goes to the collective efforts of the Community Development Councils, HDB and Enterprise Singapore for achieving this coverage. In particular, the agencies jointly encouraged nine coffeeshop chain operators to come onboard the Community Budget Meal initiative in July 2024.
All these stalls offering budget meals can be found on the BudgetMealGoWhere portal, a collaboration between HDB and GovTech, that allows users to search for the nearest coffeeshop with budget meal options.
Since its launch, the BudgetMealGoWhere portal has been well-received and has recorded more than 450,000 unique visitors. To reach out to more people, including seniors who may not be active online, MND and HDB have publicised the budget meal initiative via mainstream media, including newspapers and radio channels, and will continue to explore ways to raise awareness on the availability of budget meals in HDB estates.
We will continue with our plans to make budget meals available at even more locations. We are on track to onboard all HDB rental coffeeshops to provide budget meals by 2026.
Since Dec 2023, new buyers of privately-owned HDB coffee shops will need to offer budget meals once they have taken over the coffeeshop. Eight coffeeshops now provide budget meals in line with this requirement.
From May 2025 onwards, when privately-owned coffeeshops in HDB estates renew their application to use the Outdoor Refreshment Area, HDB will also require these coffeeshops to offer budget meals as one of the conditions for renewal. This will enable more residents to have access to affordable cooked food.
While ensuring affordable cooked food options for Singaporeans, we do not wish to overburden our local food businesses, particularly stallholders running small or micro-businesses. To this end, we are studying two key moves:
First, we are reviewing the Price-Quality Method (PQM) framework to increase the weightage of quality and take into account stall-level charges that prospective coffeeshop operators will impose on stallholders.
Second, we are reviewing HDB’s rental renewal policy to deter overly high rental bids for HDB rental shops and coffeeshops to ensure that stallholders can continue to operate sustainably.
Details of these changes will be announced at a later date.
Partnering community and stakeholders to develop more inclusive spaces
Next, let me share on how we are enhancing the inclusiveness of our neighbourhoods. Ms Cheryl Chan, Ms Jean See, Ms Joan Pereira, Ms Denise Phua, and Leader of the Opposition spoke on this from the perspective of different stakeholder groups.
Ms Cheryl Chan asked about spaces that allowed for intergenerational exchange and for people with special needs.
We actively partner the community in the design and upgrading of our neighbourhood spaces to ensure they are inclusive to people of all age groups and capabilities.
For example, under the Silver Upgrading Progamme, agencies will engage residents through a community walk to identify gaps and seek their suggestions for improvement.
This may include adding senior-friendly mobility enhancements like rest points and barrier-free access ramps along frequented routes, dementia-friendly features to improve wayfinding, as well as wheelchair-friendly therapeutic gardens and 3-Generation amenities to promote inter-generational interaction.
In addition, we also work closely with community partners to ensure that seniors and the vulnerable are well supported if their flat has been chosen for SERS. Ms Nadia Samdin asked about this.
For example, for SERS in Ang Mo Kio, every household is assigned a journey manager, who proactively reaches out to provide relocation assistance, especially to seniors. Seniors are guided throughout the entire SERS process, from announcement to key collection and flat return. Where needed, journey managers work with other agencies such as PA, AIC and MSF. Households who would like to continue living close to their neighbours in the designated replacement site can do so by applying for their replacement flats under the Joint Selection Scheme.
Ms Jean See asked about the Tripartite Workgroup’s progress in fostering safer and more efficient last-mile deliveries for delivery personnel as well as residents.
Over the past year, our Tripartite Workgroup has engaged over 2,000 stakeholders, from delivery personnel to developers. For greater awareness, URA will rove the exhibition on innovative last-mile delivery practices to heartland malls in the next few months.
As the Workgroup continues to study more ways to improve last-mile deliveries, we encourage more stakeholders and residents to co-create solutions suited for different locations.
Ms Joan Pereira raised on behalf of her residents the issue of disamenities in residential sky gardens.
HDB will continue to work with the member town councils and NEA on various efforts to minimise disamenities to residents, while keeping communal spaces open and accessible for all.
We urge everyone to be considerate in their use of communal spaces, including sky gardens.
Ms Denise Phua asked about support for condominium living.
Resources on best practices in estate management and support for dispute resolution are available, such as Strata Management Guides issued by BCA, industry-led accreditation schemes for Managing Agents, as well as the Strata Titles Boards (STB), which mediate and hear disputes related to strata-titled properties.
To the query by the Leader of the Opposition, the funds granted to each town by the Community Improvement Projects Committee (CIPC), depend on three factors.
First, the number of HDB flats in the town. Larger towns with more residents will be allocated more resources.
Second, the number and value of projects submitted. The CIPC will evaluate projects in the rank order submitted by the town councils (TCs) and Citizens’ Consultative Committees (CCCs).
Third, whether the submitted projects meet eligibility criteria. For example, projects that are not value-for-money, or cater only to specific interest groups or commercial entities, will be rejected.
Broadly speaking, larger towns that submit more projects amounting to higher values get more funding.
Most projects are approved. Where they are rejected, there are generally two reasons:
One, they did not meet the eligibility criteria, or
Two, they were lower-ranked projects from towns which submitted a total project value far exceeding what would have been commensurate with the number of flats in their town. For such projects, TCs and CCCs can re-submit them in subsequent years, with higher rank orders.
So far, we have completed three funding cycles for FY2021, FY2022 and FY2023. For FY2024, we have completed the first stage of in-principle approval. From experience, the final funding for FY2024 may be slightly lower if TCs and CCCs eventually decide, for their own reasons, not to proceed with some of the supported projects.
Based on the funding approved to date between FY2021 to FY2024:
The top five towns are: Ang Mo Kio, Pasir Ris-Punggol, Jurong-Clementi, West Coast and Sembawang, with funding ranging from $14.2 million to $21.1 million. These are larger towns, ranging from 69,000 to 104,000 HDB flats.
The bottom 5 towns are: Aljunied-Hougang, Marsiling Yew-Tee, East Coast, Holland-Bukit Panjang and Bishan-Toa Payoh, with approved funding ranging from $11.0 million to $4.9 million. Most of these are smaller towns, ranging from 39,000 to 53,000 HDB flats. The exception is Aljunied-Hougang, which has 62,000 HDB flats – a mid-sized town with the lowest funding approved across towns.
I looked into why Aljunied-Hougang has been receiving less CIPC funding than other towns. The reason is that it has consistently submitted fewer projects than the rest.
For example in FY2024:
Each town on average submitted 53 projects. On average, the CIPC approved about 39 projects at about $4.0 million per town.
Aljunied-Hougang submitted the fewest projects – 18 projects for a total of $1.2 million and the CIPC gave in-principle approval to all 18 projects.
Sengkang submitted the most projects – 248 projects worth $30 million, or about half of the more than $60 million funding approved across all towns. Given funding constraints, the CIPC could only support 47 of Sengkang’s higher-ranked projects, amounting to $4.5 million.
The CIPC is happy to clarify with any TC or CCC if they have queries on their rejected proposals. In fact, the CIPC has regularly provided explanations to town councils and CCCs that requested such information and will continue to do so.
From Pilot to Progress: Improving the delivery of municipal service excellence
While municipal issues like cleanliness and pest control may seem routine, they significantly impact residents’ daily lives. Let me now share on how MSO is working with stakeholders to pilot new approaches to these essential services.
In February 2022, we started the Integrated Municipal Operations Pilot in Tampines town. The pilot centralised the delivery of 10 common municipal services under a single operator, where they used to be done by multiple contractors under different ministries. This includes services such as cleaning and infrastructure maintenance.
Under the pilot, the active use of ops tech solutions, coupled with the cross-skilling of municipal workers, has enabled them to take on more related tasks with a leaner, more productive workforce, while also addressing issues more pre-emptively.
We have reaped good results at our first pilot site and have expanded the integrated ops to Pasir Ris-Punggol to see if we could achieve similar efficiencies over a larger area. To address Mr Xie Yao Quan’s question, the expanded pilot continued to yield good results. Resident satisfaction increased by 15 percentage points in the first 6 months of operation in Pasir Ris-Punggol, on the back of more than 30% speedier response and true case resolution, despite three times the area of operations.
Given the positive results, we are gathering learning points and studying how to refine and expand the model. We have begun proactively engaging industry players to share our findings and understand what other capabilities can be tapped on. We will share more details when ready.
Resolving complex community challenges through collaborative partnerships.
Municipal issues are really about people, not just things like roads and buildings. The trickiest municipal issues tend to involve changing human behaviour.
Ms Joan Pereira has asked for stricter measures to deal with hoarding cases. These have already been included in amendments to the Community Disputes Resolution Act last year.
Where the hoarder has a suspected mental health condition, the pilot Community Relations Unit (CRU) will work with mental health professionals from relevant agencies and community partners to refer such cases for appropriate mental health assessment and support.
If the hoarder refuses assistance or assessment, affected residents can file a claim with the Community Disputes Resolution Tribunal (CDRT) and apply to the CDRT for a Mandatory Treatment Order.
We know that the underlying motivations and support networks of hoarders and their families vary from case to case. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and enforcement is only one of several measures.
The New Environment Action Team (NEAT) will continue to develop and refine our strategies.
Mandarin Segment
Chairman, in Mandarin please.
政府将把经济餐计划推广至更多地点，让更多人受惠。
所有建屋局出租的咖啡店将按计划在2026年推出经济餐。
从今年5月开始，建屋局将要求有意续租户外用餐区的私人咖啡店提供经济餐。
在确保国人能享有经济餐的同时，我们也不希望加重本地餐饮业者的负担，尤其是小本经营的摊主们。因此，我们在考虑推出两项新举措:
首先，调整价格与品质投标方式的框架（Price-Quality Method），提高对品质的重视，并考虑到准咖啡店业者将向摊主收取的摊位租金。
其次，我们会考虑修改建屋局的租约更新政策，遏制投标者以过高的价格来投标建屋局出租的商店和咖啡店。
相关详情将在完善后会进一步公布。
Conclusion
These initiatives reflect our commitment to partnering with stakeholders, like residents and business owners, in shaping enduring, vibrant communities and ensuring our neighbourhoods remain desirable places to call home.
We invite members of this House to join us in this endeavour and encourage active participation within your constituencies.