The average wait for a public flat rose to 5.8 years in the final quarter of last year, official figures showed on Wednesday.

That was 0.2 years longer than the quarter before. Single elderly people, meanwhile, saw average waits of 4 years in the last quarter of 2023, up 0.1 years from the previous three months.

The Housing Authority blamed the longer waits on the slow delivery of new flats, with completions at the lowest level in years.

At the end of December, there were around 129,400 general applications for a flat and about 92,300 non-elderly one-person applications under the Quota and Points System.

The authority said 13,700 flats were given to general applicants throughout 2023.

It said it is confident it will be able to bring the average waiting time down to 4.5 years in 2026, partly with the help of some 30,000 light public flats.