Seed Points

General

A seed point is a digital marker that is generated for every title or index when it is created in the Plan Creator. When, for example, a draft cadastral unit (DCU) or Capture Once First index (COF) is first opened in the Plan Creator, a Location Search is carried out by the plans officer to identify the location of the property. When the location has been identified and accepted, a seed point marker is placed on the cadastral map as a link between the title information, the address information and the OS basemap.

Useful links

Plan Creator Toolbar - Add Seed Point

Location Search when creating a DCU or COF

Automatic or Manual positioning?

If, during the Location Search, a match is found for the property address in the address gazetteer, then the seed point will be automatically placed within the building polygon associated with that address.
If, during the Location Search, it is not possible to match the property address with the address gazetteer, then the plans officer will have to manually search and locate the property, and (ii) manually place the seed point within the property using the Add Seed Point button in the Plan Creator toolbar.

Where are seed points positioned?

Historically, the OS displayed a building marker within a polygon, and all attribute data (address, date, feature code, etc) associated with the building was tied to the building marker. Therefore, seed points were traditionally stacked on top of the building marker. However, with the move over the last few years from OS Landline to OS Mastermap products and the new OS AddressBase gazetteer, this has changed. The attribute data relating to the property is now associated with the polygon representing the building on the OS map, so the requirement is now simply that the seed point is positioned within the building.

Historically, the stacking of seed points within a tenement was of particular importance to our customers - when searching for registered titles within Registers Direct, a customer was charged one fee for their search where all the title markers in a tenement were stacked on top of each other, but were charged a fee per individual flat title where the title markers were not stacked. Now that ScotLIS has replaced Registers Direct, this is no longer the case as customers can search, list and view the titles in a tenement before being charged for the individual title sheet(s) they select.

In properties with no addressable buildings (for example, plots of land, agricultural sheds, off-shore wind turbines, sub-stations, etc), the seed point will be manually added by the plans officer and the requirement is that the seed point is positioned within the cadastral unit.

If the seed point for your DCU, COF, etc has been wrongly positioned, it can be moved to the correct location by using the Add Seed Point button in the Plan Creator toolbar. However, please be aware that moving a seed point that was originally automatically positioned by making a match in the address gazetteer will break the link with the gazetteer address data and the seed point will be linked to the OS national grid co-ordinates instead.

Responsibility

Initially, the person who creates the DCU (perhaps during the Manual PI process) should ensure that the seed point is positioned within the building footprint. Further responsibility lies with the plans settler who should double check the seed point is correctly positioned before approving the DCU.