Team size: 54

What are the most significant cases or transactions that you have been involved in over the past year?

The team was involved in the amendments of the Rapid Transit Systems Act 1995 and Bus Services Industry Act 2015 via the Transport Sector (Critical Firms) Act 2024. These enhance the resilience of key transport firms and safeguard their provision of essential transport services in Singapore.

The team assisted in the rollout of the On-Board Unit (OBU), which replaces the In-Vehicle Unit (IU) for collection of road-user charges. LTA is currently in the process of installing OBUs in all vehicles. The team will continue to support the policy division to implement other functions of the OBU, including potentially the payment of missed road-user charges through the OBU.

The team has successfully worked on novel enforcement and prosecution systems and processes, such as the recently announced Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) payment grace period, which aim to encourage early payment of ERP arrears, thereby reducing the number of cases that are escalated to court for failure to pay ERP. This frees up capacity of the team to focus on more critical areas of concern, such as tackling errant personal mobility device usage and illegal private hire car services.

What innovations have you made to the way your legal team works in the past year?

In keeping with the organisational emphasis on improving work efficiency and capacity, legal officers have been encouraged to re-think their work processes to focus on areas that add value to the organisation. For example, legal officers are working with policy colleagues to explore the automation of drafting of routine legislative amendments, especially where these involve publication of tables of figures. This frees up time for legal officers to focus on substantive legal advice.

Apart from legal matters, has the team worked on other company initiatives you would like to highlight?

Apart from the day-to-day provision of legal advice and support for policy and operational matters, the team spearheaded a Legal Podcast initiative for management’s benefit. Topics include insolvency law, construction payments and administrative law. Given their unique position, the team was able to combine specialised legal knowledge (simplified for ease of understanding) with an awareness of ongoing operations to create podcasts which are relevant and useful to the organisation.