“In order to enhance fire safety ... the buildings management ­office is conducting a feasibility study on the installation of ­sprinkler systems,” a spokeswoman said. A fire services consultant will submit a sprinkler system proposal to fire officials soon.

Sino Group saidit had made a decision not to renew the leases of two mini-warehouse businesses operating in two of its ­industrial buildings, but stressed it was a commercial decision.

“The landlord has arrived at the commercial decision of designating the space for other uses, and no new tenancy has been committed to since 2015. By October 20 all mini-storage business will have been concluded,” a spokesman said.

Both those premises were fitted with automatic sprinkler systems.

A source with Hang Lung Properties, which owns Amoycan Industrial Centre, the building involved in last month’s blaze, said experts were already looking into ways to tackle “problems” at another industrial building it owns in Lai Chi Kok. The source declined to say more.

Other big developers including Nanfung Group, Henderson Land, New World Development and Kerry Logistics either do not own industrial buildings or do not have mini-storage operators as tenants.

Security minister Lai Tung-kwok told lawmakers last week the department would ask mini-storage operators to take all possible measures “as soon as possible” to improve fire safety, including increasing the number of security personnel, preventing storage of dangerous goods and strengthening fire prevention training for their employees.

The Post has also seen a paper endorsed by a government think tank just a month before the fire that should have sounded alarm bells in the administration over its flagging of potential safety issues with industrial buildings lacking sprinkler systems.

Led by former director of planning Jimmy Leung Cheuk-fai, the Central Policy Unit report noted that if the government wanted to preserve industrial premises for revitalisation, two issues – improper use and fire safety concerns – needed to be tackled.

The report pointed to the creation of industrial and office building zoning, which classifies buildings as being for such uses, as well as the expansion of uses permitted for industrial buildings and the rezoning of “industrial” use to “other uses”, as having muddied the waters on fire safety. These changes meant buildings were mostly not compliant with their leases.

“There is a potential fire ­hazard in the juxtaposition of industrial and non-industrial use, particularly if a large number of outsiders are attracted to industrial buildings where dangerous goods are stored or active industrial processes are still carried out,” the report read.

Leung said storing dangerous goods without a proper licence was illegal and called for mini- storage facilities to be regulated. “Right now, the problem is they have no control over what can be put in these storage areas,” he said.

A Central Policy Unit spokesman said it had already informed the relevant bureaus of the report.

The government has been criticised for ignoring repeated and longstanding calls to tighten industrial building fire safety regulations since a similar industrial building fire in 2010 – which killed a fireman. A pledge to review safety requirements has not been realised, and more than half of the 650 industrial buildings built before 1973 still do not have automatic sprinkler systems.