Easements
An easement is a section of land on your property that someone else has the legal right to access or use, even if they are not the owner. Approximately one in 10 properties in South Australia have an easement.
What is an easement?
Easements often include shared driveways, rights to park a vehicle, or the right for utility providers like SA Water, or councils, to have pipes, drains, and cables on private land, and include the right to repair or replace these services.
Most of the time, your easement will contain water or wastewater. However, some easements may be reserved for future pipework or contain pipes that are no longer in use.
How we use easements
Where possible, we’ll always have our water and sewer mains located underground on roads and public land. However, in some cases, such as when land is sloped, placing them on private property means we can provide a better service to our customers. When this happens, we’ll always try to place these services close to the boundaries to reduce the impact on the property owner.
Easements may exist for various purposes, such as:
- sewerage
- water supply
- electricity supply
- right of way
- cathodic protection
- a combination of the above
How to identify an easement
Easements are not marked by fences or signs like property boundaries.
When buying property, it is legally required that you receive a 'Register Search' and 'Form 1' with which includes details of any easements on the property. The SA Land Titles Office keeps an electronic copy of all land in the state and this includes easement details.
How to identify an easement
Easements are not marked by fences or signs like property boundaries.
When buying property, it is legally required that you receive a 'Register Search' and 'Form 1' with which includes details of any easements on the property. Land Services SA keeps an electronic copy of all land in the state and this includes easement details.
If you're unsure whether your property contains an easement, you can check the Certificate of Title.
Guidance for easements on your property
Understand what you can do on an easement, and how to ask for removal of an unused easement or request a change.
Building over an easement
Unless there’s an issue, we won’t need to access easements on your property. However, if something does go wrong, we may need to access them very quickly.
Therefore, solid structures, such as walls, sheds or pergolas, must not be built on easements. Flowers, plants, and certain trees are fine. Find more information on building over easements and the application process below.
Manage and easement on your property
If you have an easement that is no longer needed, use our online form to explore options such as removing it, removing part of it, or changing its size.
Fees apply for this investigation.