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This privacy statement sets out the NSW Land Registry Services (NSW LRS) policy in relation to our privacy obligations to you. It also explains how we manage the personal information that we collect about you.

At NSW LRS, protecting your privacy is very important to us. We respect your personal information and your right to privacy.
 

Legal requirements

NSW LRS is required to comply with both the NSW privacy legislation (the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998 (PPIP Act)) and the Commonwealth privacy legislation (the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act)). If there is any conflict or inconsistency between any of NSW LRS’ privacy obligations under the PPIP Act or the Privacy Act, NSW LRS must comply with its obligations under the Privacy Act to the extent of such conflict or inconsistency. This legislation establishes certain principles which regulate how NSW LRS collects, manages, stores, processes, uses and discloses your personal information. These principles deal with:

• the collection of personal information;

• checking the accuracy of personal information before using it;

• the management of personal information;

• maintaining the quality of personal information;

• the storage and security of personal information;

• the use and disclosure of personal information; and

• the right of individuals to access and correct their personal information.

Exemptions included in the legislation mean that, in certain circumstances, NSW LRS does not have to comply with these principles. Examples include where:

• personal information is required for law enforcement purposes (e.g. where unlawful activity or serious misconduct is suspected);

• personal information is required for the protection of the public revenue; or

• it is lawfully authorised by other legislation.

NSW LRS also has statutory obligations to make certain information available from the public registers that it maintains. The following public registers are maintained by NSW LRS:

• the Torrens Title Register, kept under the Real Property Act 1900;

• the Water Access Licence Register kept under the Water Management Act 2000;

• the General Register of Deeds kept under the Conveyancing Act 1919;

• any index kept under section 198 of the Conveyancing Act 1919;

• the Central Register of Restrictions kept under Part 24 of the Conveyancing Act 1919; and

• the Purchasers’ Index, the Street Address Index and the Owners’ Index that are kept in connection with the Torrens Title Register.

Information contained on the publicly available registers may include personal information, where required for the operation and maintenance of such registers.
By providing personal information to us, you consent to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information in accordance with this privacy statement and any other arrangements that apply between us. We may change our privacy statement from time to time by publishing changes to it on our website. We encourage you to check our website periodically to ensure that you are aware of our current privacy statement.
 

What personal information do we collect and how

Personal information means information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable.
The types of personal information that we collect may include:

• your name, address, date of birth, contact details (including phone and email);

• information collected for, or in relation to, particular NSW LRS products or services, which may include:

  • credit card information;

  • information required for the purposes of transferring property or dealings connected to you, including information confirming the right of parties to conduct such transactions (for example powers of attorney, wills and probates); or

  • information about you that is included or is to be included in the public registers we manage, including information about real property titles and dealings connected to you.

• information collected when you provide feedback on our website (if you provide personal information when providing such feedback); and

• any other personal information that may be required in order to facilitate your dealings with us, including information that is used to verify your identity. Types of information that may be used to verify your identity include information included on your passport (including place of birth or passport number etc.), rates notices, medicare card and drivers licence.

We may collect personal information directly from you or from third parties acting on your behalf (e.g. a solicitor, surveyor, etc.) when you:

• lodge for registration a land or water access licence transaction (e.g. purchase, mortgage or caveat) or a plan affecting land;

• deal with us over the telephone;

• provide feedback on our website (if you provide personal information when providing such feedback, which is optional);

• ask us to contact you after visiting our website;

• have contact with us in person; or

• ask us to provide you with, or give you access to, a particular NSW LRS service or product.

We may also collect personal information about you from third parties, including third parties who access or otherwise interact with the public registers we manage, including when we undertake audits of those third party operators. These third parties include electronic lodgement network operators who provide services to electronically lodge documents with us, or government authorities. We may also collect information about you from other publicly available sources.
In addition, when you apply for a job or position with us we may collect certain information from you (including your name, contact details, working history and relevant records check) from any recruitment consultant, your previous employers and others who may be able to provide information to us to assist in our decision on whether or not to make you an offer of employment or engage you under a contract.
 

How we use and disclose your personal information

We may collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:

• maintaining public registers;

• meeting associated statutory obligations;

• providing a NSW LRS product or service, which may include:

  • document registration services;

  • titling and plan services;

  • information supply services, which may include providing information maintained on or derived from the public registers to third parties, including to information brokers or information services providers or directly to other third parties who are receiving an approved information supply, validation or confirmation or information product service from NSW LRS;

  • to provide customer support;

• verifying your identity;

• internal administrative operations including to measure and improve our services and business operations;

• other directly related purposes supporting state economic and social development and the efficient planning and provision of services to the community;

• considering your employment application;

• contacting you in respect of feedback you have provided to us where you have provided personal information for that purpose;

• undertaking subscriber audits of electronic network operators or other third parties who access our registers, or when in conjunction with audits of our systems by relevant government authorities or their agents;

• where permitted, to send you marketing and promotional messages and other information that may be of interest to you, including where you have subscribed to a mailing list we operate;

• as required by law. For example, personal information collected as part of the conveyancing process is provided to the Valuer General for distribution to Office of State Revenue, local councils and other rating authorities and utilities. Under certain circumstances, we may be compelled to provide personal information about you to law enforcement agencies, emergency service agencies and other organisations engaged in the planning and provision of services to the community; or

• to resolve any disputes that we may have with any of our users and enforce our agreements with third parties.

The personal information that we collect about you allows us to provide you and the community with better service.
NSW LRS has licensing agreements with information brokers which allow them to access and use some of the data collected by NSW LRS. Use by these third parties of any personal information about you is subject to provisions in the licensing agreements that restrict its use.
In particular circumstances, we may seek your consent to disclose information for other purposes not set out in this privacy statement. In some cases, if you do not consent to certain uses of your personal information, we may not be able to provide a particular NSW LRS product or service to you.
We may disclose personal information for the purposes described in this privacy statement to:

• our employees and related bodies corporate;

• third party suppliers and service providers;

• professional advisers, dealers and agents;

• payment systems operators (for example, merchants receiving card payments);

• our existing or potential agents, business partners or partners;

• anyone to whom our assets or businesses (or any part of them) are transferred;

• third parties as set out in this privacy statement, including for example, authorised deposit-taking institutions, credit reporting bureaus, information brokers, electronic lodgement network operators or as authorised by you to receive information held by us; and/or

• other persons, including government agencies (for example, the Registrar General), regulatory bodies and law enforcement agencies, or as required, authorised or permitted by law.
   

Disclosure of personal information outside of Australia

Given the nature of the public registries we manage and the services we offer, we may disclose personal information outside of NSW and Australia where persons or entities who undertake searches of, or request information from, the public registries are located outside of NSW and Australia.
 

How we store and secure your personal information

We may hold your personal information in either electronic or hard copy form. NSW LRS takes reasonable steps to protect your personal information from loss, misuse, interference or unauthorised disclosure, modification or destruction. NSW LRS’ code of conduct and information security policies prohibit employees looking at, recording or disclosing personal information about you except in the performance of their duties.
 

Cookies

We may also use "cookies" or other similar tracking technologies on our website that help us track your website usage and remember your preferences. Cookies are small files which contain a unique ID number that store information on your computer, mobile phone or other device. Cookies enables us to recognise you when you return and greet you each time you visit our website with any relevant preferences. It also enables us to keep track of services you view or preferences you have so that, if you consent, we can send you news about those services. We may also use cookies to measure traffic patterns, to determine which areas of our website have been visited and to measure transaction patterns in the aggregate. We use this to research our users’ habits so that we can improve our services. If you do not wish to receive cookies, you can set your browser so that your computer does not accept them.
We also log the internet protocol address of the machine accessing our website to analyse trends, administer the website, track users movements and gather broad demographic information.
 

Links

Our website may contain links to websites operated by third parties. Those links are provided for convenience and may not remain current or be maintained. Unless expressly stated otherwise, we are not responsible for the privacy practices of, or any content on, those linked websites, and have no control over or rights in those linked websites. The privacy policies that apply to those other websites may differ substantially from our privacy statement and we encourage individuals to read them before using those websites.
 

Access to your personal information

You can ask us to provide you with details of the personal information about you that we hold. Your request should be in writing using the contact details below. Sometimes, we may not be able to provide you with access to all of your personal information and, where this is the case, we will tell you why. We may need you to verify your identity when you request your personal information. You can expect us to respond in a reasonable time – usually within 30 days of receipt of your request.
We may charge you a fee for providing your personal information to you. This fee may include our reasonable costs incurred in providing you with the information. Separate charges may apply where you have requested us to provide you with a NSW LRS product or service or where otherwise permitted by law in relation to an information request.
 

Correction of your personal information

NSW LRS takes reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information that we collect, use and disclose is accurate, complete and up-to-date.
If you find that the personal information that we hold about you is inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date, please contact us immediately and we will take reasonable steps to ensure it is corrected.
Where you identify that the personal information we hold is inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date information in respect of the public registers (for example by incorrectly completing a filing or form) there may be a fee associated with amendment of that personal information.
Where NSW LRS does not agree with your view about the accuracy of the information and if you ask us to do so, we will take reasonable steps to note your claim where that information is stored and accessed.
 

Notifiable Data Breaches

In accordance with the Privacy Act, NSW LRS is required to notify the Australian Information Commissioner and affected individuals of certain types of data breaches.
A notifiable data breach may occur when there is unauthorised access to, unauthorised disclosure of, or loss of, personal information which is likely to result in serious harm to the individual to whom the information relates.
Our Data Breach Response Plan is designed to facilitate compliance with the data breach notification requirements under the Privacy Act and we have taken steps to ensure we are able to respond quickly to any suspected data breaches.
 

Office of the Registrar General

The Office of the Registrar General (ORG) oversees the operations of NSW LRS.
Except where it would be unlawful to do so, NSW LRS must comply with all requests or directions of the ORG concerning the suppression of personal information. NSW LRS must notify the ORG promptly upon becoming aware of any breach of its obligations under the privacy legislation.
 

Suppression of personal information

NSW LRS may suppress personal information from its public registers in response to a direction from the ORG, following a request from a member of the public advising that their well-being or safety is at risk because the register may disclose their whereabouts. Requests for suppression of personal information from public registers should be in writing and forwarded to the Information and Privacy Coordinator; Office of the Registrar General; McKell Building, 2-24 Rawson Place, SYDNEY NSW 2000.
 

Making a privacy complaint

Internal review – NSW LRS functions
If you believe that NSW LRS has breached one or more of its privacy obligations in the performance of its functions (e.g. in maintaining one of the public registers), you can apply for an internal review of NSW LRS’ conduct. NSW LRS will carry out an internal review of how it handled your personal information. Part 5 of the PPIP Act establishes guidelines for conducting an internal review.
If you are not satisfied with the result of the internal review or with how NSW LRS handled the internal review, you can seek a further review from the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal.
Lodging a complaint with the Australian Information Commissioner – personal information
If you believe that NSW LRS has breached one or more of its privacy obligations in the handling of your personal information, you may lodge a complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC); however, before lodging the complaint with the OAIC, you should firstly lodge a complaint directly with NSW LRS. You should give NSW LRS 30 days to respond to your complaint. If you do not receive a response after 30 days or if you are not satisfied with the response, you can then lodge a complaint with the OAIC.
Further information on lodging a privacy complaint with the OAIC can be found at www.oaic.gov.au.
 

Further information on privacy

If you would like more information about NSW LRS’ privacy policy, please contact the NSW LRS Privacy Coordinator by mail addressed to:
The Privacy Coordinator
NSW Land Registry Services
Legal and Dispute Resolution
GPO Box 15
SYDNEY NSW 2001
Alternatively, you can contact the NSW LRS Customer Service Centre.
Further information on privacy can be obtained at www.nswlrs.com.au
Effective: April 2019