WELCOME TO THE DECEMBER 2021 ICS EXPRESS
This monthly publication is a communication channel from the ICS Committee to the wider ICS Membership, and alerts you to:
• matters of cadastral importance;
• the status of ICS projects;
• cadastral news and events;
• ICS administrative matters;
Feedback and contributions are welcome, and should be directed to: sec@ics.org.nz or president@ics.org.nz
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The ICS Executive team - Paul, Brent, Alex, Pat, Mark, Ian, Stephen and Louis wish you, your families, and colleagues all the very best for this Holiday Season, and the 2022 Year ahead.
We hope that everyone will be able to take some extended time off to recharge after another interesting and challenging year.
Let us all hope that the coming challenges in 2022 – workload levels; new Rules; and Landonline development - will be manageable, seamless, and rewarding.
Cheers!
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PRESIDENT'S MUSINGS
From the desk of ICS President Paul Durkin
Last month we made a submission on behalf of ICS on the Housing Intensification Bill. It’s a far-reaching amendment to the RMA in the Governments arsenal of tackling the country’s housing shortage. The bill is being rushed through parliament under urgency, which isn’t unusual. What is most unusual is the bi-partisan agreement between the two major parties. It gives you an idea of how desperate things must be in supplying affordable housing in New Zealand. The Bill has gone back to Select Committee after submissions closed mid-November. It will be Law come August 2022.
The Bill allows for radical changes to our built environment. As originally drafted, it will initially apply everywhere in our major cities, allowing 3 or more dwellings up to 3-4 levels (11m in height and another 1m for a pitched roof) to be built on up to 50% coverage of existing sites. From August next year, setbacks will be minimised, bulk and location will be maximised, and sunlight, views and recession planes will largely be a relic of the past. The Government hopes this will facilitate 100,000 new homes to be built within 5 years by freeing up existing land and densifying our current built environment.
Currently there are existing protections to our built environment under the RMA. Local Authorities use District Plans and the resulting consenting process to manage and protect existing amenities. Under this Bill, consenting will be simpler, because many of the planning matters will no longer exist. “Great”, I hear you say, "less red tape, less time, less expense, less duplication of creating a subdivision consent over the top of a Resource Consent that addressed recession planes, setback, bulk etc". Under the new Bill, Councils and neighbours will have no say - the only recourse to dispute these matters will be to seek the discretion of the Minister for the Environment.
Reaction has been mixed. From NIMBYs fearing the threat to our leafy suburbs and quarter acres, to greenies applauding better utilisation of the land via densification inwards and upwards, to surveyors, urban designers, planners, and architects bemoaning the complete lack of consultation, to councils fearing the cost of the resultant supporting infrastructure and insisting the focus of intensification be city centres where transport networks, schools, adequate services, and amenity already exist.
What seems to be lacking are development standards, for example, the way in which dwellings will interact with existing streetscapes and neighbourhoods. Developers seem to be rubbing their hands with glee, and as we know, affordable housing does not necessarily mean desirable housing, and the market will not necessarily provide affordable housing if left to its own devices. It’s all new territory for us as a relatively young nation. You don’t need to look too far abroad to see good examples of intensely built-up urban development. Conversely, you don’t need to look far to see poor examples either. We’re watching with interest - you can find all the submissions, and plenty more information, here - https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/bills-and-laws/bills-proposed-laws/document/BILL_116288/tab/submissionsandadvice
Responses or ripostes should be directed to: president@ics.org.nz
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ICS IN ACTION
ICS ADVOCACY PROJECTS
Your ICS Executive Committee continue to engage with other groups and work on various advocacy projects on your behalf. Components of these ‘projects’ often require feedback, comment and contributions from Members.
The ICS projects are progressing, and our recent activities are summarised below, with their status in italics:
- Good Survey Practice – “detail document” project continues; first draft progressing albeit slowly; communications with S+SNZ for additional contributions.
- STEP (formerly ASaTS) – pilot rollout continues
- S+SNZ – Memorandum of Understanding being progressed; additional communications (see below)
- Example Survey Plans – initial examples published – examination competency list being compiled for populating the example library
- QA Checklist Template – a project with CSNZ and S+SNZ - slow progress continues
- RMA (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters ) Amendment Bill – submission delivered (see below); S+SNZ communication continues
Your feedback on these matters is welcomed. If you have any other cadastral survey issues that you want support with – or want the ICS to escalate – then please contact a Committee Member or the Secretary - sec@ics.org.nz
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RMA (ENABLING HOUSING SUPPLY AND OTHER MATTERS) AMENDMENT BILL
This Bill is intended to rapidly accelerate the supply of housing where the demand for housing is high. This will help to address some of the issues with housing choice and affordability that Aotearoa New Zealand currently faces in its largest cities. The (almost) unprecedented process of a bi-partisan approach – with the Labour Government and National opposition promoting it jointly; along with its fast-track debate process through the House makes for risky law (at least in our view).
The ICS quickly prepared and presented a very general submission on this Bill which can be read here. Although not necessarily directly related to our core remit of cadastral surveying, the planning and subdivision design aspects will likely impact our clients. This was acknowledged by the Environment Committee, and their report on the Bill was provided:
https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/sc/reports/document/SCR_118070/resource-management-enabling-housing-supply-and-other
The ICS also provided a copy of our submission to S+SNZ for their information and have since been party to the S+SNZ actions that are planned on this matter. These include a media statement and preparation of a technical paper.
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S+SNZ
The ICS have been opening communications lines with S+SNZ on various matters.
In addition to an on-going collaboration with the “Good Survey Practice” project which members of the S+SNZ Cadastral Stream are contributing to, and the RMA Bill discussions and information sharing, we have been communicating with the S+SNZ Professional Development and Advocacy Manger (Jayne Albiston) on the S+SNZ Certification Framework and Assessment Process.
An initial Zoom meeting in late November enabled Jayne to share what has been developed to date. This project aims to replace the Registered Professional Surveyor qualification, specifically to provide a qualification regime which will enable work undertaken by surveyors to be recognised by (for example) Local Authorities. To this end the certification framework has initially been developed for the Engineering Surveying and Land Development Surveying specialist areas.
The new framework begins with a Certificate of Competency based upon a self-assessment supported by evidence, validated by a third party and backed up by a video statement or interactive assessment. This certificate would need to be renewed every 4 years, and no grandfathering in of current RPSurvs or other qualifications is anticipated. The Certificate of Competency combined with compulsory annual CPD would support the issue of an annual practicing certificate which would demonstrate to TLAs etc that the holder is suitably qualified to sign off works.
While it is not anticipated that large numbers of ICS Members will want to take up these qualifications given that they fall outside the realm of most specialist cadastral surveyors, S+SNZ hopes in future to develop a higher level cadastral certification over and above Licensing under the Cadastral Survey Act 2002, and this may be of interest to some ICS members as a way to demonstrate their pre-eminent skills. We will be watching with interest and may well be able to contribute to the development of this qualification.
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TOITŪ TE WHENUA/LINZ UPDATES
RCS2010 SURVEYS – LODGEMENT DEADLINE 24-DECEMBER 2021
Surveys under the Rules for Cadastral Survey 2010 (RCS 2010) will no longer be accepted for submission from LINZ 25 February 2022. LINZ advise that surveys prepared under RCS2010 should be lodged before Christmas.
If an RCS 2010 CSD is requisitioned or lodged after 25 February, it will need to be converted to be in accordance with the new Cadastral Survey Rules 2021 (CSR 2021). LINZ are expecting the number of lodgements as well as the timeframes needed for processing to increase because of the end of year rush and Christmas break; due to the ‘bottom drawer job’ revivals that are produced prior to rule changes; and due to the survey and title fee increases taking effect from 1 February 2022.
Avoid risking delays and additional costs and time delays for your clients - get those surveys lodged now!
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LANDONLINE ISSUES AND NEWS
CURRENT PROCESSING TIMES AT 29-NOVEMBER-2021
Times for Survey and Title processing for the last 12 months are tracked below.
The summary graph for Survey Datasets reports the shortest (routine) and longest (complex) processing working days:
 
The survey and title processing times are struggling to show any improvement. Despite Toitū Te Whenua’s efforts to apply more resource; tweak processes; and streamline systems, the timeframes are becoming untenable. The current times are now impacting on our clients (delayed settlements; failed land transactions; increased penalty payments; added stress) and are also grossly inefficient in terms of our survey office processes.
We initiated communications with S+SNZ, CSNZ, and the Law Society of NZ in an attempt at presenting a major stakeholder response to Toitū Te Whenua on this matter. Following this S+SNZ Advocacy Manager Jayne Albiston chaired a meeting between representatives from Toitū Te Whenua and from ICS and the S+SNZ Council to discuss the problem and potential solutions.
Since ICS' last meeting with Toitū Te Whenua on this topic in May 2021 some strategies have been implemented, specifically:
- 10 Additional PRA's have been hired. These staff have only been trained for the CSR2021 regime, since RCS2010 is so close to being phased out.
- Additional staff hours were authorised for processing datasets. Unfortunately this coincided with the August nationwide lockdown, and was then further stymied by the Waikato L3 lockdown which affected the Hamilton Processing Centre. This effort has been rebooted since the end of November and has made a material improvement.
- Collective Working: Individual CSDs have been shared between two PRAs with less experienced staff handling simpler or more routine aspects and more senior PRA's focusing on the complex or high-risk aspects of the dataset.
The number of datasets being processed per week has increased by 60% since October, which is a very impressive effort. This however must be seen in the context of coming 'bulges' from a rush to lodge CSDs before RCS2010 is phased out and before the new fees regime comes in to force on 2 February, and in the medium term from the massive uptick in residential development in the major centres.
Part of the discussion focused around what ICS and S+SNZ and their members can do to help. One major driver of longer processing times is non-compliant datasets (eg dataset generating requisitions) which both impact the processing time and obviously delay plan approval. Interestingly there is a clear correlation between the increasing volume of datasets lodged and the rising non-compliance rate, which suggests that the larger volume of work may be impacting on practitioner's QA processes.
The ICS strongly encourages members not to compromise on quality assurance, no matter the workload pressure. QA processes are there to protect not just the cadastre but our client's interests, our reputations and ultimately our businesses. The LINZ validation process is not there to check your work or to guarantee that a dataset is correct. Remember that Schedule 2 of the Cadastral Survey Act 2002 states that
"For the purposes of determining whether or not a licensed cadastral surveyor is guilty of professional misconduct, the fact that a cadastral survey or cadastral survey dataset may have been approved by or on behalf of the Surveyor-General or the subject of a determination by the chief executive that it complies with standards specified in rules made under section 49 is not relevant."
- If you need help developing a QA process please reach out to your fellow ICS members or to the Executive Committee.
- LINZ are happy to release requisition statistics and analysis for your firm (upon request to Principle Cadastral Surveyor Mike Morris (mmorris@linz.govt.nz)
- ICS is considering making dataset compliance a focus of the next technical workshop.
ICS will be part of ongoing discussions with Toitū Te Whenua and S+SNZ to find other solutions which may include assisting with better forecasting lodgement volumes and helping to focus requisitions more towards the critical and away from the trivial.
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LANDONLINE CHRISTMAS/NEW YEAR HOURS
Landonline, including Landonline Web Search and Land Record Search will not be available from 7pm Friday 24 December 2021 to 6am Wednesday 5 January 2022.
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"ON-LINE" NEWS
TWO YEARS AND $33M IN, LAND INFORMATION NZ DELIVERS NEW SERVICES
Reseller News: 23-Nov-2021
https://www.reseller.co.nz/article/693279/two-years-33m-land-information-nz-delivers-new-services/
There are slim pickings for partners after Land Information NZ opted to take redevelopment in-house. Land Information NZ (LINZ), which operates the country's vital property titles system, is progressively rolling out new services after insourcing redevelopment of its legacy system.
Work on a five-year programme to modernise and rebuild the Landonline titles system, began on 1 April 2019. The system underpins private property rights, a process for which New Zealand is ranked one of the best in the world. The programme’s total capital expenditure as at 30 June 2021 was $33.4 million, however not much of that went to service providers because LINZ changed tack in 2018 to build its new advanced survey and title services (ASaTS) system in-house using scaled agile development methodologies.
Outside of its Landonline redevelopment, in 2021 LINZ undertook a Microsoft Exchange cloud migration ($145,000), Implemented cloud access security broker ($774,000), undertook an intranet upgrade ($432,000), replaced Map Objects ($1.5 million), implemented property rights business intelligence reporting ($241,000), implemented SHA-2 for secure log-in ($1.3 million) and also spent $1.3 million on website redevelopment.
The Landonline redevelopment project is expected to be completed in the 2024 financial year.
When Auckland Council put extra sand on city beaches, it didn’t realise that would enable wealthy beachfront homeowners to claim ownership of part of the beach. But what no one thought about was a different and unintended consequence: that all that extra sand on the beach potentially gives the homeowners with beachfront properties a windfall addition to their land. It’s all about the boundary.
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ICS ADMINISTRATION
EASEMENTS AND CSR2021 WEBINAR
Over the last two month’s we sought your level of interest to “attend” a Webinar that would be presented by Lyndon Telfer from the Office of the Surveyor-General (Toitū Te Whenua-LINZ) who would run his planned 2021 Workshop session on Easements and the CSR2021.
Some members have responded but unfortunately the total number of responses has been poor, therefore we are unable to run this event.
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Our current historical theme continues, where we highlight and reproduce brief biographical details of New Zealand Surveyors who have served the cadastral profession with esteem and whom deserve to be remembered occasionally for their overall contribution to the profession.
This month’s “old Surveyors”* are CHARLES TOWNSEND (1823-1863) and JOHN HENRY WHITCOMBE (1830-1863)
[*Lives linked through an unfortunate demise….]
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Charles Townsend arrived in the ship Cressy with his father, James Townsend, and other members of the family, who were among the “Canterbury Pilgrims”. His brother Robert, and his brothers-in-law, C.O. Torlesse and J.C. Boys were also pioneer surveyors in Canterbury.
After some experience in surveying on Banks Peninsula and a sojourn in the Australian goldfields, Charles Townsend was appointed by Chief Surveyor Thomas Cass in 1863 to establish a survey depot on the West Coast, at the mouth of either the Taramakau or the Grey River. At that time there were no permanent residents in West Canterbury (Westland) and as surveying contracts were being let to Arthur Dobson and Robert Bain, the depot was for the purpose of supplying the survey parties and prospectors who were beginning to explore the West Coast rivers.
In March 1863, the schooner Crest of the Wave was chartered to take Townsend and his party with a prefabricated store building to the West Coast. A change of plans had required that the depot be situated at the mouth of the Hokitika River but on the poorly charted and stormy coast they had some difficulty in locating the river mouth from the ship, so Townsend and a boat’s crew in the ship’s whaleboat sought for - and found - the entrance. But the Ships Master refused to attempt to take his ship across the dangerous bar and sailed north to the mouth of the Grey River leaving Townsend and the boatmen to make their way overland.
They eventually reached the Grey River on 31st May. Earlier that month the ill-fated surveyor, Henry Whitcombe (see below) had been drowned in attempting to cross at the mouth of the Taramakau.
In October after the depot had been established at the mouth of the Grey, Townsend and members of his party went back to the Hokitika to recover the whaleboat but on the return trip on the 9th October owing to mishandling of the boat at the entrance of the Grey, it was capsized in the breakers and only two members of the party, Sherrin and Simeon were able to struggle ashore, the others - Townsend, Mitchelmore, and Solomon, were drowned.
Dobson; Howitt; Whitcombe and Townsend Monument – Hokitika (1890-1900)
John Whitcombe was born in Devonshire and trained as a civil engineer under Brunel – considered to be one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history. In 1854 he went to India to follow his profession, but two years later he came to New Zealand and obtained a position under the Canterbury Provincial Council, where he became Provincial Surveyor.
In May 1863 with Jakob Lauper, a Swiss guide who had recently arrived in New Zealand, he set out to find a practicable route from Canterbury to the West Coast. They ascended the Rakaia River valley and crossed the pass now known as the Whitcombe Pass, into the western watersheds. They reached the coast but were in a very poor physical condition from exposure and want of food but neither Hokitika nor Arahura were inhabited at that time.
In attempting to make their way to the mouth of the Grey River, where there was a Maori settlement, they had to cross the Taramakau River. Whitcombe’s strength was not equal to the effort required to cross the river, and he was drowned when two derelict and waterlogged canoes in which they attempted to cross were overturned in the breakers at the river mouth. Lauper recovered and buried the body, which was later moved by the Government to the cemetery in Hokitika, where a combined monument commemorates Henry Whitcombe, George Dobson, Herbert Charlton Howitt, and Charles Townsend, all of whom were pioneering surveyor-engineers during the early days of the gold rush in Westland.
Whitcombe Pass (in the cloud); Lauper Stream merging with the Rakaia River (foreground)
Whitcombe Memorial at the Taramakau River
Sources (Text and Images):
The Pioneer Land Surveyors of New Zealand – CA Lawn (Manuscript scanned by NZIS 2005)
https://www.surveyspatialnz.org/Attachment?Action=Download&Attachment_id=2653
Hokitika Cemetery Monument: https://westcoast.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/17874
Whitcombe Pass: LawrieM, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63613749
Whitcombe Memorial Monument: Schwede66, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42950280
If you want to suggest a particular “Old Surveyor” that deserves remembering through this forum then please send your suggestion (and any details you may have) to sec@ics.org.nz.
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COMING EVENTS
DATES SUBJECT TO COVID-19 DEVELOPMENTS - DATES SHOULD BE CONFIRMED WITH THE PROVIDER:
| 24-December-2021 |
Recommended final day for lodgement of RCS2010 survey datasets (if not before!) |
| 1 February 2022 |
New Survey and Title Fees – Implementation Date |
| 25 February 2022 |
Cadastral Survey Rules 2010 (CSR2010) Expire |
| 10-12 March 2022 |
CSNZ Workshop – Martinborough |
| 7-9 November 2022 |
Trimble Dimensions – Las Vegas, Nevada, USA |
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THE LAST WORDS
“The most powerful delivery system ever invented for an idea is a story.” – Aaron Sorkin – American Playwright, Screenwriter and Film Director 1961-.
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CLASSIFIED
SITUATIONS VACANT - SURVEYOR
Thomson Survey Ltd, Kerikeri, are seeking to employ a surveyor, a licenced graduate or an experienced technician.
One of our valued employees is moving to the South Island. The work mainly involves cadastral surveying (rural and urban), engineering set-out and topographical.
The position involves a high level of client contact. We are seeking somebody with a pleasant personality who works well in a happy office environment. The person must be honest with a high level of integrity. A current driver’s license is necessary. Salary and terms of employment including a job description will be negotiated with the applicant based on experience. The Bay of Island is a wonderful place to live.
Contact : Denis Thomson 021 407732 denis@tsurvey.co.nz or Sam Lee 021 137 0060 sam@tsurvey.co.nz
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Thanks to LPMS for their ongoing support of the ICS Express. To get your advertisement in the Express, contact the Secretary.
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