Glossary of
Surveying Terms
Appellation
This is the legal description for a specific piece of land. Land has been numbered and named differently in each Land District over time. Thus, locating land by its historical legal description depends on its Land District and the type of land being dealt with. Some examples include:
‘Section 1 Block VII Mata Survey District’ for Crown land
‘Kaiti 313A6B2’ for Māori Land
‘Section 1019-1022 Town of Christchurch’ for land in a town.
Each of these depends on the way the land was historically recorded and described.
The commonly used terms to describe the land are parcels (eg Lots) and plan types (eg Deposited Plan, Survey Office plan, etc). So currently land is described as ‘Lot 123 on DP 456’. Historical legal descriptions vary by Land District and include ‘Hundreds’, ‘Parishes’, and ‘Blocks’.
Under the current land transfer system, each parcel of land is described as a Lot on a DP (Deposited Plan), eg Lot 123 DP4567 (the 123rd lot on Deposited Plan 4567).
You can find legal descriptions on rating valuation notices or rates demands. You can also search maps on some local council websites. Rating rolls, held by some city and district councils, also list the history of legal descriptions for properties.
Cadastre
The Cadastral Survey Act 2002 defines the cadastre as "all the cadastral survey data held by or for the Crown and Crown agencies".
Cadastral Survey Dataset (CSD)
The Cadastral Survey Act 2002 defines a CSD as "the set of cadastral survey data necessary to integrate a cadastral survey into the cadastre". See 'cadastre' above.
Deed
The deeds system was the main way property ownership was recorded in New Zealand before the land titles system. There is a very small area of land remaining in the deeds system.
A copy of the deed itself was held by the landowner, as their evidence of ownership, while the original was lodged and registered – LINZ still holds a partial set of these documents.
Note, however, that the significant record of the land transaction is the entry in the Deeds Register.
All deed registers and/or indexes are now held by Archives New Zealand.
Records from the deed books can be only digitally copied, because of the size and fragility of the volumes, so you may need to view these in person, or pay for a digital copy of a specific page.
Deposited Plan
Sometimes also known as a ‘Title Plan’, these are plans recording land transfer subdivisions that have been deposited by the Registrar-General of Land. They are identified by a number and a DP prefix such as ‘DP 12345’. Most modern land transfers are identified by their position on a specific deposited plan, eg Lot 123 DP 4567.
This is the plan deposited when the title was created. This could be a simple plan of the property's boundaries, area and dimensions, a detailed survey plan or a combination of both.
Easement
An easement is a right to use the land of another without having the right to possession of that land. The land subject to the easement is the ‘burdened land’ (previously known as the 'servient tenement'). An easement may be:
for the benefit of the owner of other land, when it is said to be 'appurtenant to' or attached to the ‘benefited land’ (previously known as the 'dominant tenement') or
an easement 'in gross', meaning it is for the benefit of a specific person or corporation.
The ‘grantor’ of an easement is the registered owner of the burdened land. The ‘grantee’ is the registered owner of the benefited land, or the person who receives the benefit of an easement in gross.
Some common easements deal with:
rights of way – the grantee can walk or drive a car etc over the burdened land, such as a shared driveway
drainage – the grantee such as an adjoining owner can drain water over the burdened land
right to convey electricity/gas/telecommunications and computer media – the grantee can run utilities through pipes or lines through the grantee’s land.
Easement Instrument
An easement instrument is a specific form of instrument, first introduced in 2002, which may be used to create new easements. An easement instrument is now registered under Section 109 Land Transfer Act 2017. Historically, easements were created by different forms of instruments, including:
an Easement Instrument under Section 90A Land Transfer Act 1952
Transfer Instrument under Section 90 Land Transfer Act 1952
a Memorandum of Transfer under any former Land Transfer Act
a Memorandum registered under Section 155A Land Transfer Act 1952 – this is a form in which someone can set out the standard terms and conditions applying to transactions registered on a regular basis. (The Memorandum was registered with LINZ, which allocates a reference number, and then transactions can refer to that reference number instead of setting out the terms and conditions for every transaction. Memorandum forms are commonly used by banks for mortgages, but can be used by others such as the publishers of generic mortgage, lease and easement instrument forms.)
an Easement Certificate under the former Section 90A Land Transfer Act 1952
any other document by which a registered easement may have been granted or created.
A transfer instrument registered under Section 73 or a deposit document registered under section 110 of the Land Transfer Act 2017 may also be used to register an easement.
GNSS
Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is often used interchangeably with Global Positioning System (GPS) and is a general term describing any satellite constellation that provides positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services on a global or regional basis.
Māori Customary Land
This is land which remains, in legal terms, in its 1840 state. It is an undefined customary interest which overlies the Crown’s radical title. The original Māori customary interests have not been altered by purchase, Land Court determination, or any other process. Apart from a few rocky outcrops on the coast missed by the Land Court when investigating titles in previous years, or a few hectares in rugged country where survey lines have failed to meet, very little, if any, Māori customary land exists. Where it does exist, it is totally unalienable.
Māori Freehold Land
This is land where the customary interest has been converted to a fee simple interest after an investigation by the Land Court, and the land has not subsequently been sold or otherwise changed its status. There are about 1.3 million hectares of Māori freehold land today. Where more than one person owns the land, which is the norm, the tenants in common are not assumed to hold equal shares, instead the size of the interest of each owner will have been noted in the Court Orders creating the freehold title.
Together, Māori customary land and freehold land comprise what is legally termed as ‘Māori Land’, although practically the term means Māori freehold land.
Māori Land Court
The primary objective of the Māori Land Court is to promote and assist the retention of Māori land and general land owned by Māori in the hands of the owners and to promote the effective use, management and development of these lands. Its functions are primarily administrative rather than judicial, and its approach is inquisitorial rather than strictly judicial. It is constituted as a court of record but has wide powers with regard to the receipt of evidence and management of its own procedure.
Almost all dealings with Māori land require the assistance or approval of the Māori Land Court. The Court has extensive powers to determine the status of land, confirm or deny sales, leases or gifts, determine claims to relative interests in the land, establish, audit, and dissolve trusts and incorporations set up to administer the land and determine interests on death of owners.
Māori Land Plans
These are Māori land subdivisions or partitions. They are identified by a number and an ML prefix, such as ‘ML 12345’.
Māori Reservations
A Māori reservation may be created from Māori freehold or general land for the purposes of village site, marae, meeting place, recreation ground, sports ground, bathing place, church site, building site, burial ground, landing place, fishing ground, spring, well, catchment area or other source of water supply, timber reserve, or place of cultural, historical, or scenic interest, or for any other specified purpose. Māori reservations are held for the common use and benefit of the owners or classes of Māori specified. Often these will be descendants of a common ancestor. Reservations may also be for the use and benefit of the people of New Zealand, but only with the agreement of the Māori owners and the relevant local authority.
Māori reservations are created by application and hearing before the Māori Land Court, which makes a recommendation to the Chief Executive of Te Puni Kōkiri. The reservation is created by notice in the Gazette.
Reservations are normally managed by trustees appointed by the Court.
Alienations of reservation land are severely restricted. While it is a reservation the land may not be sold, although it may be leased for a limited time period in certain circumstances. Land subject to a mortgage or charge cannot be included in a reservation, but land under a lease or licence may be. A reservation for a meeting place or marae may include land leased on a perpetually renewable basis.
Māori reservations have in recent years assumed a new importance as a mechanism to settle claims under the Treaty of Waitangi for the return of land controlled by the Crown. Section 339 of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993 provides that the Minister of Maori Affairs may apply to the Court for any land (including Crown land and some lands owned by state-owned enterprises and former state-owned enterprises) to be considered for a reservation on the grounds of its historical significance or spiritual or emotional association for certain Māori.
Māori reservations are different to Māori reserves. Māori reserves are lands administered by the Māori Trustee under the Māori Reserved Land Act 1955
Survey Plans
Some sequences of survey plans date back more than 160 years. Older plans may include the names of European settlers as well as English and Māori place names. The main sequences of plans are:
Deposited Plans (DP)
Survey Office plans (SO)
Māori Land plans (ML).
Survey plans also show the label or ‘appellation’ for a piece of land. Some examples are ‘Section 1 Block VII Mata Survey District’ for Crown land or ‘Kaiti 313A6B2’ for Māori land or ‘Lot 1 DP 12345’ for general land).
When modern land is surveyed, surveyors create the survey plan and send it to LINZ. Plan approval and deposit enables records of titles to be issued. All survey plans are held electronically in Landonline.
Surveyor’s Field Book
Surveyors use field books to record measurements obtained in the field. Field books show the bearings and distances between each survey mark involved in a survey.
Field books date back more than 160 years. Older books may have place names and physical features (eg pa sites, hills, houses, etc). They are typically bound volumes from circa 1840.
