Charters

The ICOMOS New Zealand Charter 2010

The ICOMOS New Zealand Charter, Te Pumanawa o ICOMOS o Aotearoa Hei Tiaki I Nga Taonga Whenua Heke Iho o Nehe is a set of guidelines on cultural heritage conservation, produced by ICOMOS New Zealand.

The NZ Charter is widely used in the New Zealand heritage sector and forms a recognised benchmark for conservation standards and practice. It is used by central government ministries and departments, by local bodies in district plans and heritage management, and by practitioners as guiding principles.

Heritage New Zealand / Pouhere Taonga, the Ministry of Culture and Heritage and the Department of Conservation use the New Zealand Charter to guide their heritage conservation work. It was used by Ngai Tahu in their Deed of Settlement and the Lotteries Grants Board uses it for guidance in its deliberations.

The Charter has been adopted as heritage policy by a number of district councils and is used as a standard reference document in Auckland, Christchurch, Hutt City and a number of other local authorities.

The New Zealand Charter covers the purpose, principles, practice, and processes of conservation. It also provides useful definitions of the main conservation terms such as preservation, maintenance, restoration and so on.

A note about the New Zealand Charter Revision

The revised Charter replaces the 1993 and 1995 versions and should be referenced as the ICOMOS New Zealand Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Heritage Value (ICOMOS New Zealand Charter 2010).

This revision incorporates changes in conservation philosophy and best practice since 1993 and is the only version of the ICOMOS New Zealand Charter currently approved by ICOMOS New Zealand (Inc.) for use.

For the avoidance of doubt, the English text is the approved version of the charter when quoting the Charter text and definitions and for use in legal documents such as district plans. The Maori text is a translation of the 2010 Charter.

Practice notes

In 2021, ICOMOS Aotearoa New Zealand received Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage Capability Seed Funding for scoping Practice Notes / Guidelines for the ICOMOS NZ Charter. The seed funding enabled us to commission The Heritage Practice to produce the ICOMOS NZ Charter Practice Notes Scoping Report in November 2021. Unfortunately, our application for funds to develop the practice notes themselves was not successful and so we have not been able to implement the recommendations of the report thus far.