Penalties for failing to follow fire safety orders will be increased and the authorities will carry out work in private buildings themselves if owners don't rectify problems, Chief Executive John Lee said on Tuesday.

His comments follow a fire in Jordan last week that left five people dead, with officials saying the residential building involved had two ongoing non-compliance cases regarding fire safety – one of them dating back to 2008.

Before going into this week's Executive Council meeting, Lee said the authorities want to take swifter action in future to fix fire safety issues.

"There will be a legislative proposal to be made to Legco for the government to be empowered to actually carry out the necessary work to improve fire safety and fire installations, if the responsible person delayed for a long time, or when the hazard is of a type that we think we need to move in," he said.

"Also, we will be making a legislative proposal to increase the penalty for non-compliance with, for example, directions issued by the Buildings Department."

Lee said he believes the government could put forward a bill to Legco sometime this year.