Information relating to property renumbering (RAPID rural address numbers)
Request
Please provide the number of ‘property numbers’ that Council has changed due to administrative errors by Council or other reasons for which Council is responsible (ie excluding property number change requests by residents or ratepayers). Please provide specific information relating to the following.
Response
Council does not hold a specific record that attributes changes to RAPID (rural addressing) numbers as being the result of “errors” made by council staff at the time of original allocation.
RAPID numbers across the district have been assigned over a long period, often under different standards, practices, and levels of available spatial data. As such, Council is unable to retrospectively determine whether any individual change was the result of an error, or whether it reflected the accepted practice at the time.
In recent years, updates to property addressing have primarily been undertaken to:
- align with the national addressing standard (AS/NZS 4819:2011), and
- meet requirements associated with the Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) NZ Addresses dataset.
These updates typically arise from:
- improved accuracy of spatial data and entranceway locations,
- subdivision and development changes,
- and district-wide reviews to improve consistency and compliance with national guidelines.
As a result, changes to RAPID numbers are not generally recorded or categorised as “staff errors”, but rather as part of ongoing maintenance and improvement of the addressing system.
Accordingly, Council is unable to provide a quantified number of RAPID number changes attributable specifically to staff error.