Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
You may use this work for commercial purposes.
You must attribute the creator in your own works.
This dataset was first added to Stats NZ Geographic Data Service on 29 Jul 2021.
eng
dataset
Geospatial Team
Stats NZ
0508 525 525
geography@stats.govt.nz
20121213
ISO 19115:2003/19139
1.0
239
WARD2014_clipped
Geospatial Team
Stats NZ
0508 525 525
geography@stats.govt.nz
This dataset is the definitive set of ward boundaries at 1 January 2014 as defined by the territorial authorities and/or Local Government Commission, but maintained by Statistics New Zealand (who is the custodian).
Wards were originally set up within any territorial authority with a population of at least 20,000. Wards are defined under the Local Electoral Act 2001 and result from the division of a territorial authority for electoral purposes. The ward system was designed to allow for the recognition of communities within a territorial authority and to increase community involvement in the local government system. Territorial authorities can now choose whether they would like to maintain electoral wards. As a result, the number of wards has steadily decreased since they were first created in 1989. Ward boundaries are reviewed in the year immediately preceding the triennial local government elections.
Year | Ward Totals |
1989 | 409 |
1992 | 380 |
1995 | 366 |
1998 | 332 |
2001 | 328 |
2002 | 320 |
2003 | 320 |
2004 | 320 |
2005 | 286 |
2006 v1 | 286 |
2006 v2 | 284 |
2007 | 284 |
2008 | 275 |
2009 | 275 |
2010 | 275 |
2011 | 248 |
2012 | 248 |
2013 | 248 |
2014 | 227 |
Wards are numbered based on their corresponding territorial authority. Each ward has a unique five digit number. The first three digits represent the territorial authority that the ward lies within. The following two digits are sequential, and represent the number of wards within a territorial authority. For example, Westland District (051) has three wards which are coded 05101, 05102, and 05103.
Several territorial authorities do not use wards. In the data, these territorial authorities use “99”at the end of the ward code, and the descriptor“Area Outside of Ward”. In 2014, the following territorial authorities do not use wards:
TA Code | Territorial Authority Name | Ward Code |
024 | Rotorua District | 02499 |
026 | Kawerau District | 02699 |
029 | Wairoa District | 02999 |
037 | Whanganui District | 03799 |
040 | Palmerston North City | 04099 |
045 | Upper Hutt City | 04599 |
049 | Carterton District | 04999 |
051 | Tasman District | 05199 |
052 | Nelson City | 05299 |
054 | Kaikoura District | 05499 |
067 | Chatham Islands Territory | 06799 |
075 | Invercargill City | 07599 |
Ward boundaries are defined at meshblock level.
As at 1stJuly 2007, Digital Boundary data became freely available.
Stats NZ
Geospatial Team
Stats NZ
0508 525 525
geography@stats.govt.nz
eng
boundaries
Version 6.2 (Build 9200) ; Esri ArcGIS 10.8.1.14362
Ward boundaries are based on the meshblock pattern. Ward boundaries are reviewed every three years, in the year immediately preceding the triennial local government elections. Requests for change are received from territorial authorities or the Electoral Enrolment Centre.
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 of Population and Dwellings enumeration processes easier.
The digital meshblock boundaries, and other boundaries based on dissolved meshblocks, are stored and maintained by Land Information New Zealand within their Landonline database, an ArcInfo suite.
From the meshblock pattern, higher geographies, including the 2014 ward boundary pattern were dissolved using the dissolve tool in the Arc GIS suite to create multiple output datasets.