Land audit is a systematic assessment, verification and analysis of land resources in order to determine their potential, condition and effective use. Today, the importance of land audits cannot be overstated. For instance, the land rent component of local budget revenues in Ukraine ranges from 30 to 80%. However, in order to fill the budget, it is necessary to have a clear picture of the exact plots owned by the municipality and their quantity. A land audit helps municipalities obtain this detailed information about their own land resources.
On 16 June 2023, the online forum “Land Audit in Municipalities” was held, ending the land audit support component of the educational programme “Steps for Specialists. Spatial Planning and Management of Natural Resources”. U-LEAD’s experts provided the support to 20 municipalities.
In February-May 2023, selected municipalities from 14 oblasts attended 2 seminars, 4 workshops and 6 individual consultations where participants learned to collect and analyse data on available land resources as well as to use various tools for their further systematisation and land management in general.
“Thanks to the cooperation with U-LEAD’s experts, we gained confidence, mastered new, simple and understandable tools for conducting audits, learned to collect information, use open data, work with registers and cadastres,” said Mr Yevhenii Palamarchuk from the Korostyshiv municipality.
Here are 4 simple steps of conducting a land audit to apply in your municipalities:
Step 1. Gather all possible information about your municipality’s land resources.
One of the biggest challenges faced by the training participants during the audit was the collection and analysis of a large amount of raw data. A significant amount of such data has already accumulated over the years of the land reform, and they have different formats and cover a variety of directions.
Having received templates of inquiries from U-LEAD with Europe, municipalities sent them to all possible administrators:
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The Main Administration of the State Geocadastre in the relevant oblast: inquiries regarding orders to grant permits for the development of land management documentation when the Main Administration acts in the relevant capacity; regarding disposal of state-owned lands and plots of land; copies of concluded land lease contracts in cases where the Main Administration acted as the lessor; a list of permits for the development of land management projects regarding the allocation of land plots for the purpose of transferring land plots for permanent use to state institutions of the nature reserve fund, state forestry and water management enterprises, etc.;
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Regional Military Administrations (RMA): inquiries regarding orders of the Head of the Regional Military Administration to grant permits for the development of land management documentation when the RMA acts in the relevant capacity; regarding cultural heritage sites, historical and cultural reserves and historical and cultural protected territories, cultural heritage landmarks, historical areas of settlements and protected archaeological territories; regarding nature reserve sites located on the territory of the municipality; regarding the adopted orders of the Head of the Regional Military Administration on the disposal of state-owned lands and plots of land; copies of signed land lease agreements in cases where the RMA acted as the lessor and a list of permits for the development of land management projects regarding the allocation of land plots for the purpose of transferring land plots for permanent use to state institutions of the nature reserve fund, state forestry and water management enterprises, etc.;
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District Military Administrations (DMA): inquiries regarding the adopted orders of the Heads of District Military Administrations on the disposal of state-owned lands and land plots when the RMA acts in the relevant capacity; copies of signed land lease agreements.
In addition to providing an understanding of the current situation with the available land plots, all these data obtained also helped to conduct an inventory of existing leases, leading to a discovery of agreements that were not accounted for in the municipality. Next, let us move on to Step 2.
Step 2. Conduct an inventory of existing lease agreements.
As part of Step 2, our goal was to offer municipalities a tool that would not only provide an opportunity to constantly update and summarise inventory data, but would also be accessible to use. That is why we created a “Smart Table”.
A Smart Table is an accounting table created in Microsoft Excel to systematise and summarise large amounts of information. The Smart Table automatically highlights leases that are due to expire soon, calculates rent, duplicates formatting for new rows and allows the user to apply filters for convenience.
The purpose of this tool is to transfer all information about all land plots of the municipality to the table. Considering that this is a lot of work, we, jointly with the municipalities, started with municipally owned land plots. We advise you to start doing the same.
Scanning existing lease agreements along with additional agreements was also a truly titanic effort. One municipality had 50 agreements, while some others had up to 600 agreements. Having scanned lease agreements, we hyperlinked them to the Smart Table, and now our colleagues from the municipalities can open them with a single click. Already at this stage, many participants were elated with the results. All data have been verified, entered into a table and filtered; lease agreements for each site can now be opened, and there is no longer a need to search for them in paper files. This is really convenient. If you too want to try out the Smart Table, download it here.
Step 3. Perform a spatial analysis of the received data using a geographic information system (GIS)
Conducting a land audit is not limited to the improvement of existing methods. Today, it is important to use modern technologies and innovative approaches to increase the effectiveness of land audits. One of these areas is the use of geospatial technologies, such as geographic information systems (GIS).
GIS enables collecting, analysing and visualising geographic data about land resources to make more objective and meaningful conclusions.
As part of the training, 20 municipalities were able to master the free QGIS tool to be more efficient in analysing land ownership and determining its distribution and use. As a result, each municipality now has information about its boundaries and settlements, all areas within its own territory with limited information and plots from the Smart Table with the greatest possible scope of information collected by the municipality.
It is also worth noting that the proposed Smart Table is easily integrated into this geoinformation system, allowing the municipality to have up-to-date and complete information about its land resources.
In addition, the use of QGIS in land audits allowed municipalities to detect land plots overlays, geometry errors, as well as track shady cultivation when uploading satellite images, where the boundaries of actual land use do not match the boundaries of officially leased land or are used without proper documentation. In addition, municipalities have learned to create their own address registers, link raster data, form new polygons and buffer zones around classified facilities, publish free data online (project plots, investment passports, etc.).
Step 4. Continue to collect data, update the Smart Table and use GIS in the future.
Remember that a land audit is not a static process. Land conditions and society’s demands are ever-changing, so constantly updating data is an integral part of successful land management.
According to the participants of the final event, learning was not easy, as it required constant effort, homework, watching video instructions and, occasionally, additional individual consultations from experts. However, all participants are well-aware that modern effective management decisions are based on up-to-date, reliable, complete and geocoded data. And for municipal land administrators, the use of GIS in their work is already a necessity. After all, managing land today means having a clear idea of its resources.
And keep in mind that if your municipality needs advice from the experts of the U-LEAD with Europe Programme on the use of the Smart Table, GIS or on other issues related to land audit, you can always contact our Regional Office available in each oblast.
Article by:
Oleksandr Hnitetskyi and Oleksandr Prydatko,
Spatial Planning and Natural Resource Management Experts at U-LEAD with Europe
Yana Samoilenko, Public Infrastructure Adviser at U-LEAD with Europe