ISO 19139 Geographic Information - Metadata - Implementation Specification
Metadata Standard Version
2007
Spatial Representation Info
Vector Spatial Representation
Topology Level Code
geometryOnly
Geometric Object Type Code
composite
Integer
17
Reference System Info
Reference System
Reference System Identifier
Identifier
Code
2193
Code Space
EPSG
Version
8.6.2
Identification Info
Data Identification
Citation
Citation
Title
REGC2020_V1_00
Date
Presentation Form
Presentation Form Code
mapDigital
Abstract
This dataset is the definitive version of the annually released regional council boundaries for 2020 as defined by the regional councils and/or Local Government Commission, and maintained by Stats NZ(the custodian).The regional council is the top tier of local government in New Zealand. There are 16 regional councils in New Zealand (defined by Part 1 of Schedule 2 of the Local Government Act 2002). Eleven are governed by an elected regional council, while five are governed by territorial authorities (the second tier of local government), who also perform the functions of a regional council and are known as unitary authorities. These unitary authorities are Auckland Council, Nelson City Council, and Gisborne, Tasman, and Marlborough District Councils. The Chatham Islands Council also performs some of the functions of a regional council, but is not strictly a unitary authority. Unitary authorities act as regional councils for legislative purposes. Regional councils are responsible for administrating many environmental and transport matters, such as land transport planning and harbour navigation and safety.Regional councils were established in 1989 after the abolition of the 22 local government regions. The Local Government Act 2002 requires the boundaries of regions to conform, as far as possible, to one or more water catchments. When determining regional boundaries, the Local Government Commission considered regional communities of interest when selecting which water catchments to include in a region. It also considered factors such as natural resource management, land use planning, and environmental matters. Some regional council boundaries are coterminous with territorial authority boundaries, but there are several exceptions. An example is Taupo District, which is geographically split between four regions, although most of its area falls within the Waikato Region. Where territorial authorities straddle regional council boundaries, the affected area is statistically defined by complete regional councils. In general, however, regional councils contain complete territorial authorities. Auckland Council unitary authority was formed in 2010, under the Local Government (Tamaki Makarau Reorganisation) Act 2009, replacing the Auckland Regional Council and seven territorial authorities.The seaward boundary of any coastal regional council is the twelve-mile New Zealand territorial limit. Regional councils are defined at meshblock and statistical area 2.Names are provided with and without tohutō/macrons. The name field without macrons is suffixed ‘ascii’This generalised version has been simplified for rapid drawing and is designed for thematic or web mapping purposes.Digital boundary data became freely available on 1 July 2007.
Purpose
This dataset is the definitive version of the annually released released regional council boundaries as at 1 January 2020 as defined by regional councils and/or Local Government Commission, and maintained by Stats NZ (the custodian).
This version contains 16 regional councils.
Credit
Stats NZ
Point Of Contact
Responsible Party
Individual Name
Geospatial Team
Organisation Name
Stats NZ
Contact Info
Contact
Address
Address
Electronic Mail Address
geography@stats.govt.nz
Online Resource
Online Resource
Linkage
URL
https://datafinder.stats.govt.nz/
Role
Role Code
custodian
Descriptive Keywords
Keywords
Keyword
Downloadable Data
Descriptive Keywords
Keywords
Keyword
REGC
Keyword
regc
Keyword
Regional Council
Keyword
regional council
Resource Constraints
Constraints
Use Limitation
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Spatial Representation Type Code
vector
Language
Language Code
eng
Character Set
Character Set Code
utf8
Topic Category Code
boundaries
Version 6.2 (Build 9200) ; Esri ArcGIS 10.3.1.4959
Regional councils are based on the meshblock pattern. Non-alignment of meshblock and cadastral boundaries are one of a number of reasons for meshblock boundary adjustments. Other reasons include requests from local authorities, Local Government Commission, Electoral Representation Commission and to make census enumeration processes easier. From the meshblock pattern, higher geographies, including the 2020 regional council pattern, were dissolved using the dissolve tool in the Arc GIS suite.
