Land referencing is the professional practice of identifying land and rights in land, identifying the parties connected with those rights and applying the resulting information to a defined need. It combines legal, spatial, documentary and engagement evidence in a form that can support design, consultation, access, acquisition, compensation, asset management and other land-related activities.

The central proposition of this document is that land referencing information should be treated as a connected, time-dependent body of evidence rather than as a collection of unrelated schedules, plans and contact lists. A reliable land referencing record therefore links:

the requirement that creates the need for information;

the land affected by that requirement;

the rights in or relating to that land;

the parties holding or representing those rights;

the evidence supporting each material assertion;

the spatial and temporal extent of each relevant object; and

the process and quality records showing how the information was created, checked, changed and used.

The clauses specify the required characteristics of that information and the outcomes that land referencing processes are to achieve. They do not prescribe the sequence of searches, enquiries, contacts or software operations by which those outcomes are achieved.