Lee Hsien Yang asks how long it will take PAP Govt to decide on Oxley house fate

SINGAPORE: Marking the first anniversary of his sister Dr Lee Wei Ling’s passing, Lee Hsien Yang has taken to Facebook to renew his call for the government to decide the fate of 38 Oxley Road, the long-disputed home of their late father, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

Suggesting that the can has been kicked down the road, Mr Lee questioned why the authorities have yet to respond to his demolition application although it has been a year since his sister passed.

Marking the first anniversary of his sister Dr Lee Wei Ling’s passing, Lee Hsien Yang has taken to Facebook to renew his call for the government to decide on the fate of 38 Oxley Road, the long-disputed home of their late father, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Or should it be Marking the first anniversary of his sister Dr Lee Wei Ling’s passing, Lee Hsien Yang has taken to Facebook to renew his call for the government to decide the fate of 38 Oxley Road, the long-disputed home of their late father, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

Mr Lee revealed that soon after Dr Lee Wei Ling’s passing in 2024, he applied for permission to demolish the Oxley Road house. The National Heritage Board (NHB), he said, replied that a new assessment “would take several weeks,” but no follow-up had occurred since.

“It is now October 2025,” he wrote. “How long more will it take for the PAP Government to decide?”

The Oxley controversy and the rift it created between the Lee siblings has dominated headlines for years. Mr Lee said that his elder brother, former Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, had first raised the idea of preserving the house with their father as early as 2010, and that Cabinet discussions on the matter began the following year. The youngest Lee also recalled that in 2015, then-PM Lee Hsien Loong told Parliament that once Dr Lee Wei Ling passed away, it would be up to “the government of the day” to determine whether the house should be demolished. In 2016 and 2017, a Ministerial Committee chaired by then-Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean and with current Prime Minister Lawrence Wong serving as secretary studied the matter in detail and published its report in 2018.

Lee Kuan Yew has stated his wish that the house be demolished after Dr Lee Wei Ling moved out. Following his death in 2015, Dr Lee continued to live there, saying she was honouring her father’s wishes. However, the government appears to hold the view that the final decision on the property’s future should not rest solely with the family but with the state, citing possible historical and heritage value.

In 2016, the government convened a Ministerial Committee to evaluate options ranging from full demolition to partial preservation of significant sections of the house and concluded that while Lee Kuan Yew had expressed a preference for demolition, other options should remain open and that the government of the day would have to weigh private wishes against public interest.

Following Dr Lee Wei Ling’s death in 2024, Lee Hsien Yang formally applied to demolish the house, triggering another review by the National Heritage Board. Nearly a year later, no conclusion has been announced while Mr Lee Hsien Yang’s latest post suggests that his patience could be wearing thin.