The five-minute letter that takes your name off your council's rates database

Type almost any street address into a New Zealand council’s property search and you can often see who owns it and where their rates bills go. It’s called the rating information database, and councils are required by the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 to make owners’ names and postal addresses available for public inspection.

There’s a good reason for it. People sometimes need to contact a property owner, for example about a boundary fence or a resource consent. But it also means anyone who knows your address can learn your full name, and anyone who knows your name and suburb can often work out your address.

Your right to opt out

Section 28C of the Act gives every owner the right to ask the council to withhold their name, their postal address, or both, from the public database. Three things make this one of the easiest privacy wins in the country:

• You don’t need a reason. Unlike the unpublished electoral roll, there’s no safety test.
• It’s free.
• Councils must tell owners about the right each year, usually in small print on the rates notice, which is why so few people notice it.

How to do it

1. Find your council’s form. Search your council’s website for “withhold name rating information database” or “rates suppression”. Dunedin City Council, Otago Regional Council, Gisborne District Council and Nelson City Council are among those with forms online. If you can’t find one, a letter or email works, because any written request meets the Act.
2. Include your name, the property address, the valuation or rates assessment number (on your rates notice), and whether you want your name, postal address, or both withheld.
3. Send it to the council’s rates team.
4. Check a few weeks later by searching your property on the council website.

If your regional council issues separate rates, send the request to it as well, unless your district council handles both.

A letter you can copy

To the rates team, [council name]

Under section 28C of the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002, I ask the council to withhold my name and postal address from the rating information database for the following property:

Property address: [address] Valuation or assessment number: [number] Owner name: [your name]

Please confirm when this has been done.

[Your name] [Date]

What it does and doesn’t do

• At several councils, one owner’s request removes all owners’ details for that property. Check with your co-owners.
• It doesn’t change your record of title, which names the owners and can be bought from Land Information New Zealand.
• It doesn’t remove information other websites have already copied.
• Your property’s valuation and rates remain public, because those relate to the property itself.

Even with those limits, it removes the easiest free lookup of who lives where. If you’d like to go further, the personal exposure audit covers the electoral roll, the Companies Register and the rest of your footprint.