Care Home Licence Application in Hong Kong

Who needs a care home licence in Hong Kong

Hong Kong does not license a care business. It licenses premises. Section 2 of the Residential Care Homes (Elderly Persons) Ordinance (Cap. 459) defines a residential care home as any premises at which more than 5 persons who have attained the age of 60 years are habitually received for the purposes of care while resident there, and section 6(1) makes it an offence to operate, keep, manage or otherwise have control of such premises while no licence is in force.

Six residents is therefore the whole question, and it is a question about a place rather than about a company. Six people over 60 being cared for in a flat, a converted house or one wing of a hotel is a residential care home and needs a licence, whether or not anyone calls it one. Section 3 narrows the reach: the Ordinance does not apply to homes maintained and controlled by the Government or the Housing Authority, to premises used or intended for use solely for medical treatment, to treatment centres defined in Cap. 566, or to any description of home the Director excludes by order.

The penalty is why operators ask before they sign a lease rather than after. The offence carries a fine of $1,000,000 and imprisonment for 2 years, and a further fine of $10,000 for each day during which the offence continues. Section 6(3) removes the defence that usually follows: it is not a defence to show that the person did not know that no licence was in force at the relevant time. Not knowing is the offence, not an excuse for it.

Two consequences follow from the drafting and both are easy to miss. The licence is issued to and in the name of the applicant, so a change of operator is a licensing event rather than a share transfer. And what the licence authorises is the operation of a residential care home of a type prescribed for the purpose, which fixes the home's classification — nursing home, care and attention home, aged home or self-care hostel — in the licence itself rather than in the operator's marketing. The four types are set out here.

The order of operations: premises, plans, staffing, then licence

The licence is the last thing an operator obtains, and treating it as the first is the most expensive mistake in the process. The premises decide whether there is a project at all, and four separate approvals sit in front of the licence application. The Licensing Office of Residential Care Homes for the Elderly states the applicant's duty in its own instructions: the applicant is responsible for ensuring that the premises comply with the relevant legislation, statutory plans, land lease conditions, deeds of mutual covenant and tenancy conditions, and must submit proof of those where they apply.

• Location and height. Section 19 of the Regulation prohibits a home in any part of an industrial building, or in premises immediately above or below a godown, cinema, theatre or any trade that in the Director's opinion may risk residents' lives or safety. Section 20 caps any part of a home at 24 m above the ground floor, measured from the ground of the building to the floor of the premises, subject to written authorisation by the Director.
• Design. Section 21 requires passages and doorways wide enough for walking aids and wheelchairs, non-slip tiles wherever there is a risk of slipping, and a ceiling of at least 2.5 m from the floor, or 2.3 m to the underside of any beam, unless the Director permits otherwise.
• Planning. A home is a social welfare facility use under the Town Planning Ordinance. Where that use is not always permitted on the relevant outline zoning plan, the applicant must obtain planning permission from the Town Planning Board or its designated officer and give the Licensing Office proof of it, or no licence will issue.
• Land lease. Where operating a home would breach the lease conditions, the applicant must obtain a waiver from the Lands Department. The department's own frequently asked questions on licence applications record that processing a short-term waiver generally takes 6 to 9 months.
• Building. The Buildings Department's letter on change of use of the building, and where the fit-out involves alteration and addition works, the approved plans and the consent to commence works.

The documents a licence application must contain

The Ordinance is deliberately general: section 8(1) requires an application in the form and manner the Director determines, accompanied by the information, particulars and plans the Director may require. The specific list is in Chapter 3 of the Code of Practice, which is where an operator should work from, because a document missing at submission stops the clock rather than slowing it.

Two of those items are routinely underestimated. The layout plans are not a drawing of the intended home; they are the instrument the Licensing Office assesses the premises against, and the guidance notes in Annex 3.3 run to signing, dating and stamping every sheet, marking the licensed area in red, naming the street or rear lane immediately adjoining the premises, and stating the intended use of every room. The responsible person proposal is new since 2024 and is dealt with below.

Fit and proper, and the responsible person since 2023

The Residential Care Homes Legislation (Miscellaneous Amendments) Ordinance 2023 was gazetted on 16 June 2023 and most of it commenced on 16 June 2024. It changed who the Director must be satisfied about, not merely what the building must contain. Section 8(3)(a) allows refusal where the applicant, or any person the applicant proposes to employ, is not a fit and proper person to operate, take part in the management of or be employed at the home, and section 8A requires the Director to have regard to the matters in Schedule 1 for a sole proprietor, a body corporate or a partnership respectively.

The matters in Schedule 1 are convictions, not intentions: fraud or dishonesty anywhere, an indictable offence in Hong Kong, a sentence of imprisonment outside Hong Kong, an offence under Cap. 459, Cap. 613 or their regulations, and the applicant's record of compliance with licence conditions. To check them, the applicant and the proposed responsible person must each sign an authorisation to the Commissioner of Police for the release of relevant criminal records to the department, signed in the presence of Licensing Office staff.

The responsible person is the second half of the change. Under section 11A an applicant must propose a management officer of the applicant to be the responsible person of the home, and that person becomes the responsible person on the day the licence takes effect. The duties in section 11D are two: to ensure adequate supervision of the operation, keeping, management and control of the home for the protection of residents' interests and safety, and to ensure the home is operated in compliance with the Ordinance. The role is personal, it is registered against a named individual, and section 11F lets the Director direct that a responsible person cease to be one.

For an existing home the obligation arrives with the first renewal on or after 16 June 2024. Section 11B requires the operator to propose a management officer as responsible person where that renewal is the first made on or after the material date and the licence was in force immediately before it, or was issued on or after it on an application made earlier. A home that renewed in 2025 without reading section 11B has a gap in its file that an inspection will find.

Conditions, the 36-month term, fees and renewal

A licence is not a pass or a certificate. Section 8(2)(a) has the Director issue it imposing such conditions, in relation to the operation, keeping, management or other control of the home, as the Director thinks fit, and section 10 allows those conditions to be amended or varied, and the licence cancelled, suspended or not renewed, where a condition is not complied with. The conditions are where the practical requirements of a particular building are written down, and they are read at every inspection.

The term is fixed by statute. Section 8(4)(c) authorises the operation of the home for a period of 36 months or such lesser period as the licence indicates, and section 9(6) renews it for the same 36 months or less. Renewal must be applied for not more than 4 months and not less than 2 months before expiry, and section 9(5) keeps the existing licence in effect until the Director determines an application that would otherwise have run out — which is a safety net, not a reason to file late.

No fee is payable for the licence. Section 24 states that no fee is payable on an application for the issue or renewal of a licence, and none for the issue or renewal itself; the 2023 amendments repealed the fee items that had sat beside those words. The fees that remain in the regime are for the registration of people, not premises, and they are set out in Schedule 3 to the Regulation.

The licence also has to be visible. The Code requires it to be displayed in a prominent place on the premises so that the public can identify the legal status of the home, on paper or on a screen where an electronic licence has been issued. And a licence is issued for a named operator, a named address, a stated type and a stated capacity: the Code requires a fresh application on form SWD 691 for any change to the name of the home, its address, its type, its licensed capacity or the operator, with a change of operator notified to the Licensing Office not more than 4 months and not less than 2 months before it takes effect.

What delays an application, and what the eight weeks does not cover

The published processing time is eight weeks and it is a real target. The Code states that on receipt of the required documents, and if all of the information is in order, the Licensing Office will normally take 8 weeks to complete processing a licence application and notify the applicant of the outcome. The qualification is the whole sentence: the clock starts on a complete submission.

The department is explicit that a submission with documents missing does not begin the process. Its own FAQ answers the question of whether the application starts on submission with no — where documents are missing the applicant must supply them, and processing begins after that — and says the applicant will receive a confirmation letter carrying the licence application file number and the name of the responsible inspector. An operator who wants to know where an application stands should therefore be able to name two things: the file number and the inspector.

Plans account for most of the delay, and the reasons are mechanical rather than mysterious. The FAQ sets out what each sheet must carry: 4 copies, 6 where the premises are under or divested by the Housing Authority, drawn at 1:100 or 1:50 in decimal units, signed and dated on every sheet and stamped with the company chop, showing the Chinese and English names and address of the home, the licensed area in red, the adjoining street or rear lane, the intended use and dimensions of every room and corridor, column positions, structural and fire-rated walls, fire doors and their ratings, false ceilings, mechanical ventilation, raised floor areas, and the layout of every bed with its bed number. One omission returns the set.

Alteration and addition works deserve their own warning, because the consequence is not a delay but a refusal. Where the layout plans involve A&A works for which prior approval of plans and consent to commence works from the Building Authority is required, the approved plans and the consent letter must be enclosed. If they are not, the Code says the application and all documents submitted with it will be returned and no follow-up action taken, and the applicant must start again with a fresh submission.

The question operators ask most often at this point is about a provisional licence. There is no such thing in Cap. 459, in the Regulation or in the Code: a licence is issued for 36 months with conditions, and a home that is not yet ready is not licensed on a provisional basis. The only provisional status in the regime belongs to a person rather than a building — the registered home manager (provisional), registered under section 3M of the Regulation for a validity period decided by the Director that must not exceed 2 years, and extendable once by up to 2 years for a manager registered on the transitional ground. That distinction matters when a new home is waiting on a manager's qualification: the answer is a provisionally registered manager, not a provisional licence. Staffing ratios are the next question after the licence, and the file an inspector reads afterwards is described in preparing for a care home inspection.

None of this is a reason to delay the technology decision until the licence is in hand. The corridors and shared areas a new building will have are the ones no roster covers after the home opens, and that is the gap Steadicore is built for, described on its own pages in the terms the product meets rather than in claims about staffing or savings. Planning for it while the layout plans are still being drawn costs nothing; retrofitting it into an approved layout does.