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Territorial and shared council portals

City and district councils often hold the detail needed for a local whenua or marae question: district-plan zoning, three waters, roads, local hazards, rates/valuation and property files.

You do not always need to find a separate portal for every council. Several regions now use shared systems.

Shared portals​

Waikato​

Waikato Regional Council's current data-source page points to Waikato OneView and the Waikato Data Portal. The portal provides public open datasets from councils across the region and supports search, review and download.

This can be a useful first stop for Hamilton City, Waipā and other participating councils before looking for a council-specific viewer.

Bay of Plenty​

Bay of Plenty Regional Council Maps and Data links regional maps/open data and BayExplorer. The mapping programme has been shared through BOPLASS with territorial councils including Tauranga, Western Bay of Plenty and Whakatāne.

Nelson–Tasman​

Top of the South Maps is shared between Tasman District and Nelson City. It includes property, planning, infrastructure, contours and a data-download tool. Tasman also publishes a GeoHUB open-data catalogue.

Canterbury​

Canterbury Maps is a local-government collaboration and is often a more efficient first discovery route than searching each Canterbury council individually.

Southland​

SouthMaps replaced Environment Southland's older Beacon platform in 2025. It brings together public information from Environment Southland, Southland District, Gore District and Invercargill City, with Great South.

Selected local council portals​

Hutt City​

Hutt City maps links the general maps viewer, historical aerial maps and an ArcGIS Online open-data portal. For a whenua/property investigation it is particularly useful for local property, water services, district-plan zoning, hazards and historical imagery.

Christchurch City​

Christchurch City Council exposes extensive public ArcGIS REST/FeatureServer services under https://gis.ccc.govt.nz/server/rest/services/OpenData/. Current services include district-plan, road, regulatory and land-drainage datasets in NZTM2000, with NZVD2016 used for 3D-enabled data where documented.

See ArcGIS REST and live services.

Queenstown Lakes​

QLDC publishes public ArcGIS services at https://gis.qldc.govt.nz/server/rest/services/. Current examples include contours, district imagery and three-waters data. Its district-plan maps now direct users to ePlans for current planning mapping rather than relying on old PDF maps.

Southland District​

Southland District GIS maps provides property, utilities, district-plan and other local views. For regional/shared discovery, use SouthMaps as well.

Marlborough​

Marlborough's Smart Maps cover property, consents, environment-plan mapping, wells, marine/coastal topics and other local datasets. It also maintains public ArcGIS services and an open-data programme.

Property viewers are not cadastral evidence by themselves​

Council property maps commonly combine LINZ parcels, rating units, valuations, addresses, building/consent data and council assets. Read Property and cadastre before treating the polygon or property report as a Record of Title or surveyed boundary.

Find a council not listed here​

  1. Search the council's official website for maps, GIS, open data, property map or ePlan.
  2. Check whether the regional council operates a shared portal.
  3. Look for an ArcGIS Hub/Enterprise or LocalMaps gallery.
  4. Use ArcGIS REST discovery when the web map is ArcGIS-based.
  5. Record the official council landing page even if you also save a deep service URL.

Last reviewed: 26 August 2026

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