Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Grace Fu will defend her single-seat ward of Yuhua at the next general election, and aims to "continue the journey" with residents she has represented for nine years.

She announced this at the People's Action Party's Yuhua branch office last night, before attending a National Day dinner:

"We hope to continue to make Yuhua a very happy place to live in, and I hope that the residents will give me another opportunity to serve them."

She declined to detail specific plans for Yuhua, but said that residents hoped to keep it like "a little kampong they're familiar with, despite the changes".

Yuhua has experienced a development boom, with new malls and the Ng Teng Fong General Hospital near Jurong East MRT station.

Ms Fu has served in Yuhua since 2006, when it was part of Jurong GRC. It became a single-seat ward at the 2011 polls, when she defeated the Singapore Democratic Party's Ms Teo Soh Lung, winning 66.9 per cent of the vote. The SDP said it intends to contest there again.

Ms Fu welcomes that: "Yuhua residents deserve a good contest... I think they deserve to know what the various options are, what the PAP will offer them and what the SDP will offer them."

At the dinner, she paid tribute to founding prime minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who died in March, listed programmes in place, and announced that two precincts have been selected for the Home Improvement Programme, while three blocks are slated to get lifts on every floor.