Metric land measures

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33077, 18 November 1972, Page 1

Metric land measures

The terms acres, roods, and perches as measures of land area will disappear from Valuation Department records over the next six years, and be replaced by hectares and square metres.

Likewise, in linear measurement metres will replace yards, feet, and inches. The department has about 7000 plans to convert in New Zealand, of which about 950 are held in Christchurch. The conversion to the metric system will be spread over a five-year period to coincide with the five-yearly revision of values beginning from July 1, 1973. In the Christchurch valuation dis-

trict, the counties of Cheviot, Kaikoura, Rangiora, Waimate, and Ellesmere and the Runanga Borough will be first affected.

Property-owners will first see the change when they receive notices of revised values in this period, with areas shown in hectares (ha) and square metres (m2). All metric areas up to 9999 square metres will be shown to the nearest square metre and those above will be shown as hectares to four decimal places. The quarter-acre section will be shown as 1012m2 and the popular 24-perch section as 607m2. The 55ft frontage will become 16.76 m. The 20-acre fannlet will be 8.0937 ha, and the 500-acre farm, 202.3428 ha. The conversion of areas in the valuation roll will be done by a computer pro-

gramme before the issue of revised valuations for each local authority district. Work on the plans is underway now so that they will be ready at the time of revision issue.

The plan conversion has to be done manually. For Christchurch alone, there are 157 sheets of plans showing the areas, frontages, and depths of thousands of sections in Imperial measures. A computer will produce a list showing the situation of each property, its present area, and the metric equivalent. The Imperial measures will have to be removed from the plans and the metric substituted. The same process has to be followed for linear measurements.

Metric equivalents for these will have to be read from a conversion table.