LINZ News

LINZ delivers 100 days of e-survey training

LINZ's e-survey training initiative which began last October, delivered 100 days of training and reached 264 surveyors and survey staff in 108 firms. This represented an estimated 35 percent of all surveying firms in the country who lodge cadastral survey plans. During a pilot training exercise to scope the initiative also conducted last year, a further 61 surveyors and staff from 24 survey firms received training.

The training began in the Christchurch region and delivered over 800 hours of onsite training.

LINZ General Manager Customer Services Sharon Cottrell says feedback from firms has been overwhelmingly positive.

"Uptake among those firms receiving training has been excellent, with 134 surveyors from 81 survey firms submitting e-surveys to date. In addition, there are another 900 e-surveys sitting in surveyors' workspace being prepared for lodgement.

"These firms should now be seeing the benefits with major efficiency gains and cost savings", Sharon says.

Cadastre Ltd trainer, Allan Wilson, ran 50 sessions around the country and says the experience with every person and dataset was different, and presented challenges that kept interest in e-survey strong.

He believes e-survey is an innovative system and that surveyors gain impressive process benefits from using it.

"There's an efficiency saving of approximately 75 percent in plan generation time, 50 percent in quality assurance time and 60 percent saving in lodgement fees," he says.

The only disappointment for Allan came from revisiting firms and finding some had not implemented e-survey to take advantage of the investment LINZ had made in them.

"They stated their reasons as being mainly due to work pressures, or their desire to develop third party (XML enabled) cadastral software package knowledge and avoid double entry of data," he says.

"I couldn't comprehend either of these arguments, because the downtime in R&D to implement e-survey is in my opinion far outweighed by the efficiency savings. As well, in simple four to five-lot subdivisions double entry of data would only amount to between one and two hours - again far outweighed by other savings."

Cadastre Ltd is still offering e-survey training on a commercial basis, with registration available on www.cadastre.co.nz

Auckland e-dealing focus continues

e-dealing information events for lawyers and support staff continue in the Auckland area.

The events aim to introduce e-dealing to relevant groups and support the push to encourage as many Auckland firms to use the system as possible. The first information events were held in late March and will continue until late June.

Events held so far have proved successful, with a number of firms signing up to take advantage of free e-dealing training on offer from LINZ.

The push into Auckland recognises that previously only limited e-dealing training has been offered in the area, corresponding with a lower uptake of the system in the region than elsewhere.

Opening at 5pm with drinks and nibbles for a 5.30pm start, dates and venues for the remaining events are as follows ('walk ups' and 'last minuters' welcome):

Auckland CBD Central and Auckland West	2 May
Auckland CBD East	16 May
Auckland South and Auckland East	20 June

Contact a LINZ e-dealing Enablement Representative via email on e-dealing@linz.govt.nz to sign up for any of the events or to identify your training needs.

e-dealing benefits At-A-Glance

e-dealing offers numerous benefits to users, including:

1. SECURITY:
   • increased security from signature fraud
   • only a conveyancing professional or partner with a digital certificate is able to "certify and sign"
   • built-in pre-validation tool eliminates rejections
   • no loss of documents between offices.
2. TIME AND $$$ SAVINGS:
   • 'any day of the week' settlement
   • register anytime Monday to Friday 9am-4pm
   • all data entry done in advance
   • conveyancing professionals or partners freed up on settlement day
   • file closed on settlement day
   • real time registration in seconds, not weeks
   • seconds to electronically sign each document
   • less than five minutes for a sale or purchase with one mortgage to release or register - including checking supporting e-dealing documentation
   • e-dealing fees lower than paper-based transaction fees
   • saves on disbursements.
3. USER FRIENDLY:
   • mirrors the current manual process
   • efficiently electronically registers 60 percent of all LINZ transactions ie. 17 Mortgage Discharge and Transfer title, as well as new mortgage, instruments.
   • easier to learn than e-search
   • instant check and confirm before registration
   • automated workflow for tracking and control
   • safeguards and warnings prevent mis-spelt words and wrong CT references.

Landonline

 

Prioritisation framework on the Web

As a Landonline customer, you'll soon be able to view enhancements you've suggested to www.landonline.govt.nz – including descriptions, scores and prioritised status - on the site.

From viewing the prioritised list, you'll be able to see what's happened to your suggestion and where it fits on the list. In this way you can be assured your idea has been recorded, and has not disappeared down a 'black hole'.

The move is part of LINZ's commitment to monitoring improvements to Landonline, including continuing to upgrade the application every six months as well as ongoing consultation with stakeholders.

Having a prioritised list recognises that LINZ can't fix all issues, or make every enhancement, at once. Publishing the list with scores and status, and explaining key drivers behind the ranking, ensures crucial areas are targetted.

The list is the key component in helping to make decisions about Landonline changes. Before each upgrade, a Reference Group made up of Landonline users nominated by the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors and the New Zealand Law Society, look at all known issues and possible enhancements recorded in the prioritisation list. These are sorted into survey, title, infrastructure, geodetic and electoral and business group headings and prioritised in line with agreed criteria.

LINZ ensures these are balanced with process requirements to ensure proposed fixes or enhancements would not lead to unintended consequences, such as the system running slower.

To have your suggested enhancement recorded, call the LINZ Support Centre on 0800 665 463 and select Option 6.

Landonline 2.6 upgrade on its way

The latest six-monthly upgrade to Landonline, version 2.6, will go live on 16 May 2005.

The full range of changes will appear on the Landonline website under Registered User, System Updates. Improvements requested by customers and included in the upgrade include:

For TA e-certification:

• An amendment to the Territorial Authority (TA) certification template 224 (c) of the Resource Management Act 1991 to allow surveyors to individually select the Completion Certificate, Consent Notice and Bond to reflect the conditions imposed by the TA.

For e-dealing costumers:

• When creating new e-mortgages, a new reminder message will display to prompt entry of Priority Amount details.
• When creating new e-discharge of mortgage instruments, the 'Reserve personal covenants' checkbox will default to 'checked'. Currently the checkbox defaults to 'unchecked'.

Capturing e-surveys outside a converted area

Since Landonline rolled out several years ago, LINZ staff have turned surveys lodged in paper form into digital surveys, irrespective of whether they were in a converted area or not. In fact, a reasonably large number of surveys were captured into Landonline before the data conversion project began.

An e-survey in an unconverted area can be carried out in much the same way as in a converted Survey-accurate Digital Cadastre (SDC) area.

However, underlying data is only to the accuracy of the Digital Cadastral Data Base (DCDB) and there will be at best, a minimal number of traverse marks to which to connect the new e-survey.

Linking of new data is dependent on the accuracy of the boundary nodes, and as DCDB did not use survey observations to define parcel dimensions, the new survey data may appear distorted.

Also note that for mark linking, the tolerance setting will need to be set to a lower level when surveying in an SDC area, and in some cases it is more practical to link the marks manually. If a LandXML file has been exported from Landonline and loaded into survey software, the node linking can be performed before importing a file into a new e-survey.

For more information on capturing surveys, go to e-survey Education on the Landonline website and click Surveyor Education link to either 'Exception Process' and/or 'Placeholders'.

Otago University students e-survey savvy

Otago University Survey School students have become the first in the country to encounter e-survey as part of their course. Introduced in November 2003, e-survey allows all types of cadastral survey data sets to be lodged electronically with LINZ. The system is being increasingly used around New Zealand with a 21 percent lodgement rate nationally in March, including a 43 percent lodgement rate in Canterbury for that month.

LINZ Customer Strategy senior advisor, Jeff Needham, says LINZ has worked with the school to introduce e-survey to final year students completing the Bachelor of Surveying degree.

He was at the school's inaugural e-survey tutorial and says interest in the system was high among the 45 or so fourth year students doing the SURV427 paper. He said they took to e-survey 'like ducks to water'.

"There was a great turnout, especially as they came in on a Friday, which is normally a day with no lectures for them, and as well it was the day before the West Coast's Wild Foods Festival," Jeff says.

During the session the students were each issued a Digital Certificate, with LINZ providing the licences for the School's spatial lab of 30 computers.

The students will use e-survey to prepare datasets for a redefinition project required as part of their course. Most chose to survey their student flats, and have already started using Landonline to search for the underlying information to get the complete picture before undertaking the fieldwork.

With the group set to graduate at the end of this year, Jeff says by Christmas the country will have its first crop of survey graduates who don't expect to deal with paper.

Currently Otago is the only University whose tutors are being trained in e-survey, although Auckland-based Unitec is also considering introducing e-survey into their course.

Keeping your firm's PC environment safe

It is imperative that security around Landonline is maintained to protect the integrity of state records. To enable this, Landonline utilises a multi-layered, two factor authentication security system incorporating a unique electronic identification Digital Certificate, password and pass phrase to ensure its security.

When it comes to your firm's PC security, it is necessary to also make sure your PC and Internet environment is safe. The following are 10 basic steps you can take to protect your firm's PCs from viruses and other nasties:

1. Take care when opening e-mail attachments: This is the most common way to import a virus onto a PC. Before opening an attachment, make sure you know who sent it. Also be cautious opening attachments with .pps, .exe, .scr or .pif file extensions as they often contain viruses.
2. Use anti-virus software and keep it up to date: A number of commercial anti-virus products and anti-virus programmes are downloadable from the Internet.
3. Install anti-spyware software: Protect PCs from Spyware and Adware: these programmes are placed on PCs without consent and track what is sent and received over the Internet.
4. Use firewalls: Protect PCs from unauthorised access by hackers. Personal firewalls that prevent unauthorised access to PCs are available on the Internet.
5. Keep updates and patches up to date: Regularly download security updates and patches for operating systems and other software. All software providers issue patches (fixes for bugs and security flaws found on any release of software) and service packs (several patches).
6. Use hard-to-guess passwords: Mix upper case, lower case, numbers, or other characters not easily found in a dictionary, and make sure they are at least eight characters long. Turning passwords into a rhyme can help you to remember.
7. Know where to look: be aware of security issues and regularly use this checklist as a guide.
8. Back up work: Regularly back-up PC data on disks, CDs or tapes
9. Don't share PC access with strangers: Learn about file sharing risks.
10. Finally: If using dial-up connections, disconnect PCs from the Internet when not in use.

Regulatory

Building Act 2004

The majority of the Act came into force on 31 March 2005, repealing the Building Act 1991.

The Act modifies the notifications and certificates required to be given to the Registrar-General of Land (RGL), relating to:

• construction of buildings on land subject to natural hazards, and
• buildings straddling boundaries.

1. Construction of buildings on land subject to natural hazards

If a building consent authority considers that:

• natural hazard(s) affect a building site, and
• the building work is unlikely to cause or increase a natural hazard on the site, and
• the natural hazard justifies a waiver or modification of the Building Code

- it must grant consent subject to the condition that it will give notification under section 73 identifying the natural hazard, as follows:

Land type	Must be notified to	Must include Project Information Memorandum	Must include details of Natural Hazard
Crown	Relevant Minister and Surveyor-General	Yes	No
Maori	Maori Land Court Registrar	Yes	No
Others	Registrar-General of Land	No	Yes

Except where an entry has already been made, under section 641A of the Local Government Act 1974, or section 36 of the Building Act 1991, the RGL will record on the computer register of the building site:

• that a building consent has been granted under s72, and
• particulars that identify the natural hazard(s).

If the authority determines that the entry is no longer required, the RGL will remove it on receipt of notification under section 73 from the authority.

2. Buildings straddling boundaries:

A Project Information Memorandum (PIM) application may relate to land comprised, or partly comprised, of two or more allotments of one or more existing subdivisions, held by the owner in fee simple.

With certain exceptions (see BA 2004 s.76), the territorial authority (TA) must state in that PIM as a condition of the grant of a building consent, that the allotment(s) it specifies must not be transferred or leased, except in conjunction with some other allotment(s) it specifies.

A building consent authority must not give consent until the TA has issued a certificate under section 75 imposing the condition, a copy of which it must lodge with the RGL.

The RGL will then record the certificate on the computer register of each allotment or part allotment.

However, where the RGL is satisfied that it is not practicable or desirable to do so, he may require:

• the deposit of a plan, amalgamating the allotments into a single allotment, or into two or more allotments, and
• the creation of one or more computer registers for the land in terms of the plan.

If a TA agrees to an owner's application to the removal of the entry, it must lodge a certificate under section 78 with the RGL, who must record on the computer register of each allotment, or part allotment, that the entry has been removed.

Forms and Fees:

LINZ and the Department of Building and Housing are developing precedents for the:

• Notification of Condition, under section 73(1)(c) and 73(3)*;
• Notification of Redundant Entry, under section 74(3) and (4)*;
• Certificate Imposing Condition, under section 77(4)*; and
• Certificate Approving Removal of Entry, under section 83(3)*.

*Section references are to those requiring the lodging of documents, not those imposing or removing conditions.

While LINZ recommends use of the suggested forms by all authorities, any document satisfying the requirements of the Act will be accepted for registration.

The standard registration fees apply.

Survey dispensation process

The Cadastral Survey Act 2002 and the Surveyor-General’s Rules for Cadastral Survey 2002/2 provide for the Surveyor-General, or a delegate, to grant an exemption from a rule or standard or to specify different requirements in a particular case.

Some recent Surveyor-General Rulings 2004/1, 2005/1 and 2005/2 describe cases where different requirements can be applied and a dispensation may not need to be applied for.

Chapter five of the Cadastral Survey Guidelines also describes a number of cases where dispensations can be granted and outlines factors to be considered.

Surveyors seeking dispensations in cases other than those covered by Rulings are to submit a written proposal to a Senior Advisor to the Surveyor-General, prior to lodgement of the survey, detailing the circumstances of the survey and the justifications for the exemptions sought.

The request for a dispensation should be sent to the LINZ Processing Centre where the survey will be lodged, attention Senior Advisor to the Surveyor-General. Click here for a list of addresses.

When lodging a dataset for approval surveyors must document in their Survey Report the reasons and authority for any dispensation, whether it is by virtue of a Surveyor-General’s Ruling or a specific dispensation from the Surveyor-General or a Senior Advisor. In the latter case, the Survey Report should also quote the Landonline Request reference number for the dispensation.

Caveats: a cautionary note

A recent case against the Registrar-General of Land has resulted in a more stringent approach to LINZ's treatment of caveats against dealings, under section 137 of the Land Transfer Act 1952 (LTA).

Form 18 in Schedule 2 to the Land Transfer Regulations 2002 provides panels to insert information required by section 137(2).

In Norrie (Cindy Sue) v Registrar-General of Land in the Wellington High Court (CIV 2004-485-2153 - Ellen France J. - 10/02/05), a caveat was lodged by Mark Hector Norrie, as beneficiary of the Norrie Family Trust, against a title of which the registered proprietors were Ian David Maxwell Norrie, Cindy Sue Norrie and M&H Trustee Services Ltd.

LINZ accepted the caveat, but the registered proprietors took the view that it failed to comply with sub-sections 137(2)(b) and (c).

Justice Ellen France acknowledged that what constitutes "sufficient certainty" will vary with circumstances and that on receipt of a caveat, the RGL is not exercising an adjudicative function, but performing an administrative act.

She also observed that a registered proprietor can make an application for removal of a caveat under s.143 and seek damages from the caveator, under s.146.

The Judge decided that:

• the RGL must be satisfied that requirements as to form are met, as they provide a threshold.
• Although it was the "bare minimum", the description in this case equated with that in In re Peychers' Caveat, in terms of the description of the nature of the interest, and with the form in the 'Land Titles' precedents book.
• However, it was necessary to explain how the interest derived from the registered proprietor. In some cases this factor may be obvious from the title, but that was not so here. "M & H Trustee Services" was not clearly linked to the "Norrie Family Trust";

Accordingly, the judge considered the plaintiff was correct in that the requirements of s.137(2)(c) were not met.

For practitioners, the decision confirms that caveat forms must contain all information required by s.137. In particular, practitioners must ensure that the derivation of the interest claimed from the registered proprietor to the caveator is explicit.

Non-compliance with the requirements of s.137 is not a minor error, or defect in form, which LINZ can overlook. It is an omission to comply with the LTA.

Though the RGL is not required to verify a caveator's entitlement to any estate or interest claimed (LTA s.148A), LINZ will reject caveats, which fail to satisfy these requirements.

Land Titles New Zealand /Forms and Practice: Precedent 48 (p302/221) is a useful guide:

"The above named caveator claims a beneficial interest in the land contained in the above [computer register] as cestui que trust of which the registered proprietor, ……[name]……, is trustee."

Hot Topics

Reminder to Surveyors

Surveyors who pre-allocate a plan number through the e-survey system are reminded they need to lodge the plan as an e-survey. If circumstances change and plans are not lodged electronically, surveyors need to ask LINZ for a new pre-allocated number and title references, if applicable, to enable manual lodgement.

More praise for Landonline

- e-dealing benefits the sole practitioner

…… "… I believe that it is actually easier for small firms to take on e-dealing as there are probably less management issues compared with some of the larger firms."

…… "It is so convenient to be able to obtain a search of a title, literally within a minute, especially if a client is with me and I need to obtain a title search if say, they are looking to enter into an agreement for sale and purchase. It certainly shows that as a firm we are up with the times in being able to utilise the modern technology which is available."

…… "There is actually more risk involved in the manual environment because there is always a possibility (albeit a small possibility) that the documents may get lost in the post."

…… "I have certainly noticed over the last few weeks an increase in the number of firms which have taken up the opportunity of e-dealing, and certainly it results in efficiencies for the law firms involved. Quite apart from the cheaper registration fees, a copy of the title can be sent to the client and mortgagee at the same time you would send out a bill and statement to the client. At that point the file can be closed."

- Richard Sprott, Canterbury Tales, (March 2005)

- Landonline 'robust'

"The electronic system [of Landonline] is more robust and fraud is more traceable than in a manual environment."

"The cost-benefit analysis is a no-brainer and the costs will continue to come down over the next few years."

- John Greenwood, LawTalk, 28 March 05

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