Survey plans

Submission of mine survey plans

The Work Health and Safety (Mines and Petroleum Sites) Regulation 2022 requires mine operators to prepare mine survey plans of their operations as well as prescribing certain content, standards and who is to undertake such surveys.

Under section 121(1) of the Regulation, the operator of a mine must provide a copy of the survey plan, as prescribed, to the Regulator, including in the manner and form required by notice in a gazette.

View the current gazette notice Provision of mine survey plans to the Resources Regulator 2026.

The gazette notice requires all coal mines and other underground mines (under conditions prescribed in the gazette) to submit survey plans annually to the Regulator.

Mine survey plans must be prepared in accordance with the following:

Sections 116 and 117 of the Regulation
The Surveying and Spatial Information Act 2002 and its Regulation
Surveying and Drafting Directions for Mining Surveyors 2020, which can be found at spatial.nsw.gov.au/surveying/mining.

As required by the gazette mine survey plans are to be submitted electronically via the NSW Resources portal.

For more information on the submission process view the following resources:

Access to mine survey plans

Under section 121 of the Work Health and Safety (Mines and Petroleum Sites) Regulation 2022 the Regulator may make a copy of a survey plan it has received available to a person:

(5) for the purposes of the administration of the Dams Safety Act 2015, the Mine Subsidence Compensation Act 1961, the Mining Act 1992 or the Petroleum (Onshore) Act 1991, or
(6)(a) if the Regulator is satisfied that the person has a legitimate concern about a risk to the health and safety of a person and making the survey plan available is likely to lessen that risk, or
(6)(b) if the Regulator is satisfied that making the plan available is otherwise in the public interest.

Mine survey plans may be confidential under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011. Approval of the Regulator is required for access to confidential mine survey plans. If approved confidentiality conditions will be applied to release of such plans. This will be further explained in the application process.

An application for a copy of a confidential mine survey plan must be made via the NSW Resources portal (create an account if required and navigate to “Request for Mine Survey Plans”).

The exception to the above is where a mine survey plan is greater than 20 years old. These are not considered confidential and generally can be obtained free of charge directly from the NSW Resources online system DIGS.

An application for copies of non-confidential plans can also be made via the NSW Resources portal. This may be of use where an applicant has difficulties locating relevant records in DIGS or where high-resolution images not available in DIGS are required. Fees may be charged for applications via the NSW Resources portal.

600 dpi series – All hardcopy survey plans and associated documents held by the Regulator have been scanned to an archival high-resolution standard of 600 dpi TIFF format. From these records a register of coal mine plans (PDF, 172.39 KB) (official mine survey plans and supplementary plans) based on colliery name and Record Tracing (RT) number has been created. Copies of high-resolution plans can be requested using the application form on NSW Resources portal.

Access to stored hardcopy plans is generally not available except in exceptional circumstances. Significant costs may be incurred for retrieval and re-storage of hardcopy records.

IMPORTANT: Mine survey plan records can contain errors, inaccuracies, omissions or otherwise be incomplete due to a wide variety of factors. Such factors include historical survey practices and standards, varying regulatory requirements, reproduction and storage issues, and human error in the initial survey and drafting process. Mine survey plan records should be interpreted in the context of which they were created, stored and reproduced.

For information on how NSW Resources regulates mine survey, including plan submissions and access, please refer to our Policy: Mine survey (PDF, 187.26 KB). For further advice please contact mine.survey@dpird.nsw.gov.au.

Note: Costs associated with the search and provision of survey plan copies are charged per digital file which is established during the record search and will be advised at the time application. A minimum fee will apply to cover administrative costs. The final cost for provision of survey plan copies is dependent on the availability, nature and volume of records to be searched.