This Rossall Street has a covenant. Read its story in "Paper Trail", Summer 2007 issue of Heritage New Zealand

Heritage covenants attach to a land title and place conditions or restrictions on its use. They are therefore a very important mechanism for long term heritage protection.

A covenant involves an agreement between the NZHPT and a property owner and once signed is permanently attached to a property’s title. It therefore binds all subsequent owners and any breach of this covenant is an offence under the Historic Places Act.

To date the NZHPT has entered into over 80 heritage covenants with property owners. About a third apply to residential properties, where the owners have worked to restore their historic homes and want their work to be protected if they later decide to sell the property.  You can read a little about the Rossall Street property shown above, and more about covenents in "Paper Trail", an article in Heritage New Zealand, Summer 2007 issue.

Seven covenants apply to former post offices (in Auckland, Ponsonby, Tauranga, Havelock, Oamaru, Lawrence, Port Chalmers), due to the policy of the government in covenanting some historic properties before they disposed of them.

Other covenants cover such things as stables, farm stations, rock art sites, and archaeological sites.

There are five Maori pa sites protected by covenants, either at the request of the property owners or as a condition of resource consents imposed by local authorities under the Resource Management Act.