Speakers:
Des Chatwin, LPI
David Norris, Senior Plan Examiner, LPI
Tony Swallow, LPI
Les Gardner, Manager, Cadastral Management Unit, LPI-Bathurst
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Keith Cadogan The Cumberland Group has a very long association over many years with those State government agencies which deal with and regulate land, surveying, land titles and land information. Over this time the group has established close relationships with many different officers from these agencies. This important regular liaison contact occurs, not just at these seminars, but also at our ordinary group meetings throughout the year and also with individual group members. It's also somewhat of a tradition that this fourth seminar session is devoted to these agencies. There is a very sound reason for this; it sustains interest throughout the day by finishing on a strong note, which invariably informs those attending. Today's fourth session is very much in keeping with that tradition. To introduce the session we have with us today Mr Des Chatwin who is the Divisional Manager Registration and Information Services would you please welcome him.
Thank you very much. Last time I was here I was a Deputy Director of Land Titles Office and I was addressing the issue of the accreditation of surveyors which you know the results of that. I had a quite interesting year that year because how that started was we were asked to look at that and there was talk of a consultant coming in and I said you're better off having someone from within the office that was not associated in any way with the surveying side of things, you should never say those things because you always get the job. So I had a year of doing that with Alan Cavanagh and a few other people; Phil North was one of the others. The reason I'm here today is that Warwick Watkins was going to be here, however he was called out to the Minister's office, he thought he'd be late so I came to apologise on his behalf for being late, but now he's only just left there and he won't be able to make this session. He will be here for the session this evening but its just one of those things, the Minister calls - you attend, that's it, so nothing else we can say about that. I'm sure the people from the LPI you probably all know what that is, it's a merger the three organisations and as Deputy Director of Land Titles Office I thought that my job would be the first to go and it probably was but then I got the job to merge the three agencies, I was sitting there peacefully one day thinking I'll be disappearing in six weeks and here I am I'm still looking at you. So its still on the drawing board, we've made lots of inroads but the thing is it takes time to merge three agencies that have got very strong backgrounds and the real idea is to integrate the systems, that's the major task and that's on the way and once you see all that come together you'll understand why it will really be a successful merger. I'll move on now and move into the session; who's on first? I'm the late starter in this session, you on first Dave? Dave Norris will now come on and commence the session, thank you. APPLAUSE
Our next speaker from Land & Property Information NSW is very well known to the Cumberland Group is he is David Norris, Senior Plan Examiner & Plan & Title Adviser. He is a regular speaker at our group meetings he is going to speak on defining mean high water mark, please welcome David Norris. APPLAUSE.
Good afternoon, it's always a pleasure to address this meeting every year. As Keith said I was asked this year to say a few words on the definition of mean high water marks. A very technical subject, once we get over this technical subject I guess we can all have the happy hour. But anyway I could talk and anybody else could talk for hours and hours and hours and hours on mean high water marks, the definitions therein, the problems therein, the strange examples we get in, every time we think we've seen it all we get another different plan which is different again. So this is a very short expurgated version and I ask you to bear with me. Title boundaries affect every piece of land in NSW that has a frontage to water subject to the tides, everything from the Pacific Ocean down to small tidal creeks. Now as has been spoken about by several of today's presenters, initiatives are already under way that may impact upon the future definition of these boundaries. They include the Coastal Council, courtesy of Professor Thom. His report on the public access issue, the review of the Surveyors Practice Regulations which is ongoing at the moment and continuing discussions between LTI NSW and other interested parties and authorities with the overall aim of streamlining and standardising the approval process. But just at the moment and because a lot of those things are ongoing I will be only talking today about the current practice. In other words what is required if you lodge a plan tomorrow or the day after or next week, don't go any further forward than that, that has a definition to a tidal boundary. From the outset I should stress that LPI NSW is only a registration authority, we don't give approvals, we don't make an assessment we merely register the plan once those approvals have been given. We cannot grant concessions to the giving of that approval, we can't allow a plan to be registered which does not comply with the current legislation. We don't have any choice. I think everybody should bear that in mind. So if you ring me up and say I want a concession from supplying a definition to a mean high water mark I can only say no. I don't have any choice. To start off with I'll run through the technical information and these are all contained in the Surveyors Practice Regulations. I will in the process thereof look at a couple of practical examples. The first regulation is current clause 20. This clause sets out the method of surveying a boundary that includes a natural feature, and it includes all those technical bits. You can't traverse unless you do it within 30 metres of the boundary. If you're going to make an observation to a point on the boundary its not to exceed 100 metres. And if you use remote sensing then it's your discretion the distance from the ground control to the survey but the method must be shown on the plan. Now you know all these things because you're the surveyors. You use them. I'm only the examiner, I only make sure you do it right. Clause 55 says that the old definition must be retained unless the change to the boundary has been by natural gradual and imperceptible means. Professor Thom spoke about varying things this morning but that's the current state of play. And that's what we will be using until things change. Clause 57(5) calls for the approval of the Minister where land below the mean high water mark in other words land that constitutes the bed of the water way is owned by the Crown. If the bed is owned by some other party then its not the Ministers consent that is required but the approval of that adjoining owner. Now other authorities may be the Water Ways Authority if you're in Sydney Harbour for example, Ports Authority if you're in the Hunter Valley, Port Hunter, the Olympic Coordination Authority, the Foreshores Authority or Sydney Water. You could also have a private owner adjoining and in that particular case their consent would be required. Clause 57(4) states that if the high water mark is inaccessible, irregular, not practicable to determine, covered by an environmental practice statement the surveyor may define the approximate position of that boundary by reference to regular curves or right lines. You don't have to go out there in your boats, but you do still need the approval even though its by regular curves right lines. The Minister's approval as it appears on the plan is in this format. The approval states that the Minister has no opposing claim against the definition of the mean high water mark. In other words your client is not in contravention and is not opposed and is not taking part of the Crown's estate. Clause 57(6) calls for the surveyor to lodge a report with the Surveyor General detailing the reason for the change in the boundary. That looks in this format and that format there (referring to screen). Both of those approvals will be required on nearly all plans. Either the approvals appear with original signatures on the plan itself or the original approvals on the paper from the relevant authorities or accompany the plan on lodgement and LPI. They are filed permanently on receipt with the deposited plan papers and we note the plan accordingly to the fact that the consent was supplied. Clause 58 calls for any unsurveyed landward boundary of a Crown reserve fronting title waters to be surveyed and defined by right and curved lines. And these right and curved lines should be approximately parallel to the position of the mean high water mark. Again the definition must have the approval of the Minister. And we'll look at an example. Here we have a parcel of land that's been granted with a 30.48 metre wide reservation. On its first resurvey the landward boundary of the reservation should be surveyed and defined by right lines in the manner I've just mentioned. The effect of the new definition is to establish the landward boundary of the reserve, no matter how the mean high water mark changes, by either accretion or erosion, does not affect the position of the landward boundary of the reserve. That's the current legislation. Now are approvals required for all plans and all title boundaries? No, there are some instances where approval is not required. Approval is not required where the boundary is compiled that's fairly obvious. This can apply also to plans that are partially surveyed and we'll just have a look at DP1011397 as an example. Now this is an RTA plan, that's irrelevant, that's just one that we found that has four sheets but we'll concentrate just on sheet 1. Now the new road in the RTA plan crosses the river. Therefore we have a riparian title boundary affected by new road development. The plan surveys the title boundaries of lots 12 and 15 as it should. You can see the traverse line that the surveyors put in but further down the new road, the boundaries of lots 10 and 11 have been compiled where they meet Lansdown River. All appropriate approvals were obtained for this plan and it was duly registered. However there is some information on the plan that may cause confusion; survey information. Occupations have been shown along the northern and southern boundaries of lots 10 and 11. The remains of the 'two rail' fence and the line of the old posts were added to the plans to define the line of those boundaries, not to define the mean high water mark in those particular lots. No attempt was made to redefine the mean high water mark at lot 11. To clarify this situation it was suggested the boundary be clearly marked as being compiled from DP621153 and Crown Plan 561666. The distances along the boundaries of 10 and 11 should be shown as deducted because you are not defining the mean high water mark with regards to that part of the boundary. In this example, fortunately, the surveyed and deducted measurements on the northern boundary of lot 11 are identical. There has been no attempt to change the position of the mean high water mark with regards to the survey line. But what happens when the distances do not agree. Where the surveyed and PO measurements do not agree, the boundary has to be shown with a step to mark the change from the surveyed boundary to the compiled boundary. Both distances should also be shown along that boundary, one as PO, the other one to the mean high water mark and the traverse. Another situation where approval is not required is when the bed of the waterway has been included in the original grant. We've had several of these of late. The approvals are not required because there is a concession contained in the Surveyor Generals Directions. This concession was granted because in these cases the Crown does not own the bed of the waterway which was included in the original grant. We'll have a look at this we'll look at Portion 8 from the Parish of Tuggerah, on the Central Coast. Portion 8 was granted with right line boundaries as a nice almost rectangular portion. Although Tumbi Umbi Creek is title, and passes through the portion, the grant did not reserve the bed of the creek or allow for any other 30 metre reservations. It took the whole lot, granted the whole portion. As you can see the portion has now been fully subdivided and the boundaries of the lots are often along the line of the creek. The doctrine of accretion and erosion still applies to all lots that have creek frontage but the Crown does not own the bed of the creek. Under these circumstances the approval of the adjoining owner is required if that person is available. In many cases the ownership is not easily found and often remains as a residue after all usable land has been transferred out of the original portion and that person who owned it and the original grantee and his heirs and assigns may be dead or just unlocatable. So in that case it'd be very difficult to get their consent. However, you may be asked to supply the approval of the owners of the lands on the opposite bank if accretion and erosion has extended far enough to impact upon the original title deeds. Other circumstances where approval is not required is where the definition is the same as that shown in the Crown grant in other words you go back out there and you find the bank as it moves and its the original portion plan or where the definition is the same as that in a registered plan that has already got the required approvals and the approval is drawn entered and endorsed on that original plan. Now we get a lot of plans in where they say mean high water mark is the same as DP12345, you could look up DP12345 there is no indication anywhere that any consents were ever given. As such we cannot allow that plan to be registered without a new consent and we get asked that one a lot. Finally, there is one more situation that I'd like to talk about. Approvals to the mean high water mark are also required where the land is defined by a former mean high water mark that is now no longer adjoining the stream. This is also the case where the boundary is changed suddenly; it's not natural, gradual and imperceptible but was manmade for example by construction or landfill or by legislation or even by natural flood and I'll show you an example. This is the Cooks River at Campsie. In some areas the land below the original mean high water mark was resumed by Sydney Water and the flow of the river diverted into a concrete canal. In this case the former mean high water mark is preserved as a lot boundary to some of the lots in Byron Street. And it obviously adjoins the reclamation work between the former boundary and the constructed canal. In this case the reclaimed land being owned by Sydney Water it is their consent as adjoining owner that is required to the definition of the old mean high water mark. Now that's a short, brief introduction to what is the current practice of mean high water marks. As I said before you can go on for hours and hours and hours and every one you look at seems to be a bit different. I'm the Plan & Title Adviser at LPI NSW, if you have any doubts or problems or questions then please contact me using those contact numbers by phone, fax, email or over the counter or any other method you can think of and we'll look at them on a case by case basis. Thank you. Have a good afternoon. Keith Cadogan Our next speaker from Land & Property Information NSW is Tony Swallow. He is the Deputy Manager, RP Plans he is going to update us on changes at Land & Property Information NSW. Would you please welcome Tony Swallow. APPLAUSE Tony Swallow - 'Changes at former LTO' Good afternoon. Unlike Dave, it's my first time at the Cumberland Group and I must say it is a pleasure to be here. It's not real exciting being behind a microphone, but being able to see a lot of faces and put names to them is very encouraging and I just hope I can keep up with the same standard of presentation that's occurred through the rest of the day. This afternoon I'm going to talk about some of the changes both to legislation and the practices of LPI NSW that have occurred and that affect you as surveyors. I'll start with the legislation. On 1 June 2001 the Minister for Conveyancing Act and the Strata Schemes Freehold & Leasehold Development Acts commenced. The Conveyancing Act was amended by the introduction of the Conveyancing Amendment & Buildings Management Statement Act. This amendment was introduced to bring the Conveyancing Act in line with the Strata Schemes Freehold Development Act. Since 1992 under the Strata Act it has been possible to have a Strata Scheme that affects only part of the building. In these instances a strata management statement which binds subsequent owners sets out the method under which the building is to be managed and maintained. Furthermore reciprocal easements for support and shelter will automatically arise between different parts of the building. The aim of the new legislation is to take this method and apply it to buildings where there is no strata scheme, different parts of the building are in different ownership. So what we're talking about is a building that's been divided by stratum subdivision. These types of buildings are already in existence. They're usually covered by an agreement between the owners as regards how they're going to be maintained and managed. The problem here is that many of these agreements are not binding under law to any subsequent owners. That means every part of the building changes hands a new agreement should be entered into. And if you're owning the bottom half of the building and you can't come to an agreement with the person on the top or vice versa it makes it a bit hard to sell and a bit hard to manage. So the amendment introduces building management statements that are binding on all owners so it brings it in line with the Strata Act. Now the statements can be lodged in two ways, if the building is already in existence it can be lodged in [Can't hear] ownership, the statement can be lodged as a dealing. If the building is being affected by a new subdivision by stratum subdivision it can be lodged as part of a plan, so there are two ways that can come in. Details of the legislation can be obtained from the LPI bulletin number 84. At the same time the Strata Schemes Freehold Development Act and the Leasehold Development Act were amended by the Strata Schemes Legislation Amendment Act. And what this did, it allowed changes to the Act just to make them work a bit easier. It now allows that a part strata scheme can be part of a staged development so we can now have part of staged development now can go into this building and this building area we have stratum sub division coming in over a strata development plan. Where a building is already subject to a Strata Management Scheme any subsequent Strata Scheme over another part of the building does not require another Strata Management Statement, it's already covered by the first one. It also allows certain initial period restrictions to be lifted. If a developer still owns all the lots in the scheme there are 3 things he can now do without getting an order from the Strata Board. They include; he can lodge a Strata Plan of Subdivision, can lodge a notice of conversion to convert land, and any dealing that affects common property. In other words he can transfer, lease, have a restriction or an easement over that land without that expiring in the initial period. It also allows for revised schedule of unit entitlement to be lodged by owners of the Corporation at conclusion of a staged strata development. It also provides for the transfer of common property and certain other dealings by special, rather than, unanimous resolution. These dealings includes: transfer in addition or lease of common property, creation of variation of easements or covenants over the common property and dedication of the common property as public road, reserve or drainage reserve. And once again information bulletin 83 contains more detailed explanation of changes. Now we can move on to a brief summary of changes in LPI. As Des Mooney talked about, as both Des's talked about today, the old agencies of the Valuer General's, Registrar General & Surveyor General's have brought together to enhance their service delivery. That's not only to the people outside but also to our practices inside there was some duplication inside and it was a chance for us to remove some of that duplication. On the area of the Internet we've made some changes to the way the plans are processed. The change is here surveyors may see request for lodgment of locality sketch plans coming out with requisitions for plans or where the plan, where no requisitions are raised, these will be coming out on your Registration Notices. Now I'll stress that these requests will not delay any plans registration while we wait for the sketches to come in, its just giving notice to surveyors at an earlier stage than happened in the past. The past practice was for the old LTO to do their plan examination or plan process, register the plan send the image off up to Land Information Centre they would look at their part of the plan process, turning it into part of the DCDB and then they would have a look at whether the search sketches had come in or not for the coordinated Cadastral. If any problems were found they would shoot a plan back down into Sydney to where their survey services was, coordination centre was, and they'd start asking for the locality sketches to come in then. We've reorganised that process and now the plan goes to Survey Services as soon as its lodged so it just speeds up the process a bit there and it's a chance for us to start making this amalgamation work. As you know the locality sketches are an integral part of the survey control information management system and are used to plot the position of survey marks. The copies of locality sketch plans are available to surveyors, enabling you to use your location of marks in the field and they provide a means of confirming whether the marks have moved or not. Locality sketch plans still need to be lodged in original form so that means they either have to be mailed in at the moment or they can be lodged at the counter. There are moves afoot to have a look at making the lodgment of these sketches available electronically, they're still being looked at and I haven't got a timetable when that may be introduced but it is under way. You should be aware that today is the last day that LPO NSW will be undertaking alterations to unregistered plans on behalf of surveyors. In order to satisfy industry and community expectations that plans be drawn consistently high standard surveyors will be required either to attend LPI NSW to amend the plan lodge a substitute sheet or instruct the lodging party to uplift the plan for return to them. The question has been put to the office as to whether electronic lodgments or substitute sheets will be acceptable. Presently the officers business systems do not accommodate electronic lodgment of a substitute sheet when the plan is lodged manually. Planned enhancements to the imaging system and integrated titling system will eventually facilitate this process. We are looking at it; it takes time for our systems to be brought up to accommodate it. As usual with electronic lodgment of plans has progressed the policy and practice of the plan registration services will be reviewed with a view to embrace all forms of electronic business with surveyors and surveyors will be promptly informed once these issues have been resolved. Now might be an ideal time to have a quick update on e-plan, the electronic lodgment of plans which is still in its pilot stage, that pilot has been expanded to enable the Roads & Traffic Authority to lodge some of their plans electronically. At the moment it is currently limited to plans that do not require signatures other than those of a surveyor, so what we're looking at is a purely an acquisition plan with nothing else going on in the plan and as yet we haven't received any probably due to those constraints that allows a very small portion of their plans to come in. We are eagerly looking forward to those plans being lodged so they can further test the system and further open it up to the wider surveying community. Now compiled plans. In this regard its fair to say that the office has been a bit remiss in some of our paperwork on compiled plans. In 1998 the Surveyor General asked the then LTO to ensure that whenever possible all new subdivision lines were to be fully surveyed. This was to assist in both maintaining the accuracy of the Cadastral and a pre-requisite to the coordinated Cadastral project. Since then all requests for exemption from the preparation of a plan or survey have been assessed under this policy. Exemptions are usually only given when the preparation of a plan or survey would cause undue hardship or unwarranted cost to the landowner. And after 3 years its only now that we are going to issue a new addition of information bulletin 12 which sets out the guidelines for compiled sub division plans compiled easement plans, compiled residue lots and that should be available on the website, hopefully today, if not in the very near future. And the website is www.lpi.nsw.gov.au Thank you for your time.
Our final speaker today is last but far from least. Les Gardner is the manager of the Cadastral Management Unit. He holds a Surveying Degree, Science Degree and is a Registered Surveyor. He is going to bring us up to date on activities at Land & Property Information, Bathurst. Would you please welcome Les Gardner Les Gardner - 'Update on the former LIC' Thank you Keith. Just while we're warming up, like Tony I haven't been to the Cumberland Group Development Seminar before, but it's certainly a great roll up and you should be congratulated on the success that you've achieved over past years. What I'm going to do today is give you an update on the survey practice regulations, just inform you about some border guidelines we've produced, update on GDA and Skims, update on the topographic mapping program and new products available at Bathurst. First of all the survey practice regulations. Generally the regs are out for comment at the moment. In a nutshell the regulations have to be made before 1 September this year, they preserve existing structure and clause numbers as much as possible there's a slight change where they've introduced a new clause for GPS, clause 23. There is new 'water as a boundary' procedures as you know we've been talking about it at length today and three is also a general exemption from any part of the regulations. If you want a copy of the surveyors practice regulations at the moment its on the home page of www.lpi.nsw.gov.au, that's where it is there but it won't be there forever I dare say it'll be moved fairly soon but if you want to get a copy in the future, you go down to the publications the green dot you're probably familiar with this page if people use the lpi site, go to the publications there is another one for technical procedures and manuals go there and its at the bottom that'll reside there for quite some time. That's also where you get the Surveyor General's directions, Registrar General's directions and so forth a lot of the technical manuals are there. So if you want them, that's the best place to get them. And that's at the front page of the Reg. Okay just in summary some of the changes, the bigger changes, City Surveys will be known as Urban Surveys and they'll include rural residential or the small lot surveys will be classed as an Urban Survey. Country surveys will be known as Rural Surveys is that the classification of terrains moved out of the old clause 24 and 26 in the definitions and a reference mark can only be used once, it has one life, you can't use the same reference mark and reference it to 15 corners, it's got one life. If you use it use it wisely. After that you have to place one. Okay easement surveys, just a clarification of the reg, you don't need to mark, this is a survey for easement purposes only you don't need to mark the corners of the easement as you do a normal lot just to clarify that requirement. Clause 20, natural feature boundaries, Dave spoke of this. Up from there you traverses had to be within 30 metres of the feature and your radiations couldn't be more than 100 metres long. But as an accuracy point of view it doesn't matter if the radiations are 100 metres or a kilometre you still get the same accuracy so you can sit up on top of the hill and radiate the guts out of the job but if you get a difference that's where the problems are highlighted you've got to explain the difference does the doctrine of accretion apply, how does it and if you're not close to the feature you'll never know you come to determine this new position. So it's up to the surveyor to do the survey however he sees fit. Clause 21, its moved into Part 7, the water as a boundary procedures. This is requirements relating to the landward boundaries of roads and reserves and because this one has moved out the old clauses 22 and 23 have moved forward one regulation and we've introduced a new clause for GPS which basically you can use GPS but you must achieve class B or better. That's so you can measure short lines. Class C you shouldn't measure lines shorter than 100 metres to get the accuracy required so a stricter class you can measure shorter distances and the specifications for the use of GPS will be SP1 version 1.4 which I'm sure you're all familiar with. it's a good read. Okay improve the accuracy for traversing, the old formula for traversing with 30 plus 20 root n, that's been changed to 20 plus 10 root n for the misclose of traverses just to give you an idea. It was fairly lenient before, that come out of the old Lands Department of 1916 directions so we should be able to measure a little bit better now we're 100 years on so we've tightened that up slightly it shouldn't promote too much problem. Datum lines in the present legislation it specifies to adopt the plane grid bearing whatever that is. In the new regulation we're specifying to adopt the grid bearing because now with the 6 degree wide zone for MGA coordinates says the after cord corrections start to become significant and if you use a distant trig stations quite often you'll get a bit of a misorientation it looks like if you're on the edge of the zones. People at Bathurst will know about this because we're on the edge of the zone so if you observed distant trig stations north or south use the grid bearing but if you're only using shorter distances shorter than 5 kilometres it won't make much difference. Okay when you do adopt established marks for orientation we'll get you to show the class and order, at the moment you only have to show the class of the marks so its accuracy and established marks is any survey mark with a class A, B or C or better. Clause 33, PSAs they're going to be deleted so any people out there caught up with PSAs (proclaimed survey areas), they will be deleted from the surveyor's practice regulation so the 300 metre rule will apply or the 1000 metre rule depending whether its an urban or rural survey but you can only substitute a maximum of 2 permanent marks, we've had some surveyors that have had a number of marks 250 metres away and they've put in a whole State development and they haven't placed not one PM or SSM. The next surveyor he comes from NSW then has to do a considerable amount of traversing or place more marks and it probably should have been done on the first major estate. Reference marks and for urban surveys must have an RM at least every 100 metres for road frontage if there are intervening boundaries if there are no intervening boundaries you go to the next tangent or angle or whatever the road geometry promotes. Rural surveys. Line marks can be if you can see between them you can place them at least 500 metres apart but you should note the position of where they are to help the next surveyor find them. The plan should be noted with that position and on rural roads should have a reference mark every kilometre. RMs for roads, like I said every 100 metres for urban surveys. RM reference marks that are found greater than, at the moment, it says you've got to place a mark at least 80mm depth, 8 centimetres depth but as soon as you place one, you should note on the plan that you've placed it deeper than 8 centimetres. So we assume you're going to dig at least 150mls so if you find a mark more than 150 mm down, then start noting the plan. Rural surveys if it's a rural survey, it doesn't matter on the size of the lot, it's a 3 x 3 peg; presently its 4000 square metres. So depending on the zoning of it so all rural residential plans or sub divisions will be marked with a 3x2 peg or the metric equivalent whatever that is. And the Surveyor General will have the power to approve other types of survey marks for recycled plastic pegs or whatever comes onto the market from time to time so we'll have more flexible that way. Part 7 is a complete rewrite and it consolidates the regulation that was a little bit untidy before, there are a few more definitions from the Crown Lands Act and you must obtain permission of the adjoining owner whether or not it's the Crown or Sydney Harbour being the Waterways or other national Parks, Sydney Water whoever the adjoining owner is. Clause 56 contains all the creek bank boundaries at the moment I'm not too sure if you had a new definition you would have had to have the DLWC's concurrence to the new definition, but that will be changed from what's out there at the moment, its only for the original reek definition you'd need consent or any complicated boundary definition. Otherwise it's the standard you've got to lodge a comprehensive report to the LPI examiner at Queen's Square, Sydney you won't have to go through DLWC for their consent there. Clause 58, this is determination of land with boundaries. There are two parts here, we have the landward boundaries fronting tidal waters they will still be required DLWC's consent and they should be marked accordingly. But there are a number of conversions that happened during the 1970s and 1980s where there was a reservation excluded along the water course, they weren't surveyed, now any future subdivision of those surveys they have to be marked, and this one catches many surveyors because you've quoted up front its got a 2-3 kilometre creek frontage and a reserve there and then lo and behold you get a requisition that you've got to go ahead and mark the thing and its really high on the popularity list and generally everyone is sort of caught out so we've met people half way here for the reservations fronting the non title streams you have to define the new land or the landward boundary and it would have been defined but you don't have to mark it you have to place reference marks every kilometre because in the end the landward boundary or the reserve is not going to be fenced so that the marking requirements are not really there for a client as such on the whole they're all placed in wheat paddocks or grazing paddocks as such so hopefully that meets the surveyors half way to try and lessen the blow. You'll need to obtain the consent of the adjoining owner if the mean high water mark changes and new landward boundaries and to get that you need a comprehensive report. That comprehensive report will require the basis and method of determination of the mean high water mark boundary, an opinion supported by evidence or documentation for the change and any other information. Here last week we got a report two lines said the mean high water mark goes up and down a vertical bank which sounds pretty good but is it claiming 5 metres of accretion yet I'm not too sure if he actually looked at what he actually defined, it just happened to be different so we need to know why it changed, not just where it is, that's the missing link generally. Clause 59 this is for natural feature boundaries as well if you do define a natural feature boundary, creek, mean high water mark we'd probably prefer either offset traverses or a traverse with offsets and show those offsets on the plan or show a table of short line boundaries traverse along the actual feature, but we want the plan noted for what the feature actually is, if you say the bank is boundary mean high water mark or centre line or river, say on the plan what the feature is because we have some coming in now that has a short line traverse along the feature with no comment on whether or not, does the natural feature take precedent over the right line unless there is something on the plan it's a bit difficult to determine. And last of all there will be a general exemption clause, it's a new one being introduced from any part of the regulation. So you'll be able to get an exemption from any part but it will be fairly strictly policed or implemented. This is basically to pick up the things a lot of mariners went in Sydney Harbour leading up to the olympics, you have to place a peg at the corner or place a reference mark within 30 metres problem is these were all 100 metres out under the water and it was a bit difficult yet you had to place the reference mark or get an exemption and we couldn't give an exemption because there was no provision so we basically got the surveyors to put some survey marks along the foreshore and show measurements out to the lot corners that were 100 metres out in the water because that was the best we could do. So we'll be able to handle those sort of exemptions. Any questions on the survey practice regs, this is a pretty quick tour through all this because I know you want to get to the drinks rather than listen to me. Any questions? I hope it's an easy question. QUESTIONS Michael Neate This is a question to Tony regarding those, as of Monday, the amendments to the requisitions on plan, whether you can give an agent the authority to make a minor amendment. Tony Swallow Good question. I would imagine we would give an authority to an agent to make that amendment I'm not sure if I can answer just now as to how we would police that authority how we would want it delivered. Whether it be a case to case basis or whether you could put it in as a general covering letter for somebody to do your amendments for you but we would be looking I should imagine we would look down that track if we hadn't thought of it before we'd definitely look at it now. Keith Cadogan Les has got a little bit more to say then I'll call for questions to any member of the panel. Les Gardner Moving on,
recently we've just released border guidelines for the definitely
of the Queensland NSW border that's the cover sheet, but basically
its to help surveyors in northern NSW more than guys here but it
will be available on the net its not quite there yet and I've got
a couple of copies here if people want a copy but it gives guidelines
and background of the history of the border, legal aspects to the
boundary between the nations along the border because it's the watershed
on the main part from the Gold Coast to Tenterfield Creek then it
follows the river out to Mungandai then it's a straight line section
that John Cameron surveyed out to Camerons Corner so there are various
precedents to take into consideration depending on where you are.
It also goes into the lodgement process, it's a helpful guide for
surveyors. This is a graph, I'm not too sure if you've seen it before, this is how many surveys connecting onto the Survey Control Network, the green bars are the percentage of lots connecting onto ISG or MGA and the red bars represents the number of survey plans connecting onto ISG or MGA. The top line is 90% that's not 100% if we had it 100% the executive would think we're not quite achieving it so if you take the top off it looks much better. Okay this is a look in skims they're different class and order, this is class marks with accuracy of a class of 2A nearly 3,000 they're the trig stations. A again there are nearly 2000 they're generally the trig stations again, class B is the old accuracy 2 in SCIMS, 82,000 class B and 13,000 class C or the old accuracy 4. So we've basically got 100,000 established marks in SCIMS. Then we've got another 80,000 that are out there somewhere that we know about and there's still a lot out there that we don't know, probably 40,000-50,000 marks out there that we don't know anything about. We need to give them a home so send those sketches in. Okay this is order in SCIMS. This is with our re-adjustment procedure to give class and order to every mark. Class represents the technique how the survey was done, order is how its accuracy its absolute spatial accuracy how it relates to Tidbinbila in Canberra for people who want to know. So order that's our trig network, again there are 3000 in the trig network that's the GDA spy network in NSW. So we've got 3000 there are only 7000 for the whole of Australia so we had about 40% of the whole adjustment and there are 1300 marks with order 2 1300 with order 1 13,000 with order 2 and there's a few there with order 3. So in total we've readjusted 18,000 survey marks, the other 80,000 are yet to do and to do that we're doing it on an LGA basis with the readjustment, Blue Mountains is done, Albury is done, Penrith and a number of other LGAs we're basically working from the east coast, west. Topographic mapping program; this is the program that we're working towards the colours don't come up. We've done Hastings, metropolitan Sydney, south coast. Out the front I left there is a catalogue of the topo program when you have a look at it there are different shadings or whatever, when you look at a map when its our new series its got an air photo on the back, but with our new topo series they're all GDA compliant rather than the old AMG ticks and like I said they've got the image on the back. This is Katoomba, that's what it looks like on one side and if you flip it over the other side it looks like an air photo it's a rectified aerial image and we had to do a lot of software development to piece the photos together but it looks not too bad and you can acquire these images as well as a product. They are basically on a 10k by 10k footprint. Geographical names board I'm not too sure many people use this but just to give you an update they've got a new search facility on it again this is on the LPI home page you go to the GNB button if you click on this geographical register search you can place in if you want to search on a name you'll get everything with that name or you can pick the status that refers to the different levels of 'approval-ness' or the designation, here we've done a search on Warwick Farm the suburb and it comes back Warwick Farm one hit its assigned that's what you want to look for, assigned means approved. Approved doesn't mean approved when you look at this, approved means approved to be advertised, just a little trick for young players that is. Many a player got caught before today. And it gives a brief rundown of the position of the name. This is searching the name and if you're doing surveys in areas where you're not too sure just check that the name you're putting on for the suburb because generally the title is one of the first areas an area is known officially as something if you can do this search beforehand or search on river names, creek names you'll see some have been crossed out and other names have been put in you can do a search, this like all of our products at LPI this is the right price, this one is free so you won't get penalized, I guess, if you use it. But anyhow moving on, a number of other products from LPI there's space view scenes this is from the landsat imagery over all NSW there are orthoview modules this is the photo on the back of the new topo maps you can get those on 10k by 10k print or footprints, the Parish maps on CDs. You can acquire any Parish map at all, that's if they've still got the map and you can go back and research any history as such. There's Cadview which is a CD with Cadastral layer, topo view which is various, all the topo maps scanned and georeferenced for what purpose you can put them into many products and there's also state view which is basically the tourist map type catalogue. This just gives a bit of an idea of the space view its pretty rough, 100 metre pixels, its low cost imagery, this gives an idea of what the orthoview and that's the coverage at the moment which is basically its the same as the new topographic mapping program that's where the images come from and it covers a bit further north and a bit more round the Sydney area. This is the Parish map CDs, Cadastral layer on a CD, topo view which is the various topo maps and the tourist maps. That's it. Thank you very much. Keith Cadogan Are there any questions now for any member of the panel. (Unidentified) When will you be able to download or view the locality sketches from the SCIMS website? Les Gardner Fairly soon I hope that's included with our next upgrade you'll be able to search by lot and DP street address and get the images on line at the moment we can't do it we've got a technical problem there but the way they're stored at the moment its different to the web technology but I can't give you a date but it'll be this year. Craig Johnson Les I spoke to you the other day you just discussed it again about new coordinate adjustments, that means as those adjustments go through there will be new coordinates for every mark in that section that you're adjusting I'm wondering whether you're going to highlight in a publication that certain areas will be readjusted for those because I'm sure there are a lot of surveyors who have a lot of coordinates in their files and now have to get some new ones. Les Gardner Yeah good point well our management system is SCIMS so as they get readjustment they get adjusted they'll be put into SCIMS but you've got a good point maybe we should have a regular article in Azimuth or something like that to advise of the large areas that have been upgraded with the readjustment like Wollongong will be about a month off and then Shoal Harbour. Ian Harvey from Central Coast Les, just with regard to mean high water mark approvals, is the system being speeded up or its still the same old system?
At the moment its the same old system but we hope to speed it up but a lot of the delays are outside my control but we're trying to speed it up though because various organisations us and DLWC are feeling the heat and we're certainly getting the message but I can't you know promise at this stage. Greg Oxley Just a question for Tony. Tony, is there any proposal to charge for requisitions and is there any proposal to charge for general enquiry that might be made to the LPI examiners? Tony Swallow Can you clarify what you mean by charge for requisitions? Do you mean is the LPI going to charge surveyors if we requisition them? Not at this stage I mean it has been talked about the concept of charging for certain enquiries has also been discussed, it is still at that discussion level and I suppose it is a possibility in the future but as to what the charges would be or we would be charging in every case I can't answer that. I hope we would be we've done everything else in consultation with the industry so I can't see that being any different. Darryl Warry Tony I've seen some plans lately, in the panel reserved for plans used in the survey ,there has been a company logo and company name and website on the plans is there any department policy on advertising such as that on the linen plan. Tony Swallow Not as such. Whether there should be depending on the logo and what is there there have been times I've asked surveyors to take things off or people take things off I'm not saying surveyors, but its something we need to look at its something we definitely don't encourage but as regards a written policy I don't think so. Geoff Wood, Taree Les up in the Manning River there is only one automatic tidal recording station at Coraki there is none at Taree I reckon it'd be good idea if you lent on the public works to get one at Taree make my life a bit easier but the same sort of thing might apply to other rivers that it'd just make it easier to work out the tidal gradients and make it a little bit easier to work out where mean high water mark is. Les Gardner This issue probably should be taken up by all the coastal groups to maintain the tide gauges that are up and down the coast because what was there were placed many years ago. Public Works did extensive surveys up and down the various estuaries and a lot of those tide gauges have since been removed so only strategic ones remain so maybe as an organisation or an industry we could push it both ways, good point. Mark Rowles from Toukley For David Norris, David we have a property at Toukley which you may be familiar with where there is a high water mark definition occurring we have claimed an extra 8 or 10 metres, the neighbour has claimed that he will no longer be able to walk across land that I understand is not his anyway but there's been a Ministerial direction I understand to prevent that plan being registered and other plans and these plans currently have been awaiting registration for or approval from the department for nearly two years now so can you give me an update on that please? David Norris Phone a friend you reckon. I'm not actually familiar with that particular one. However, what I said during my presentation still applies, we can't register a plan that doesn't meet the legislative requirements if your particular plan does not have the consent shown on it its not been approved by the necessary authorities we have no right to register it. Likewise if all the consents are shown on the plan then we'd have great difficulty not registering it. Mark Rowles
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