Regional Council staff are combing through the hundreds of pages of the Rena decision this week removing a misspelling of ‘Motiti' as in Motiti Island.

Motiti is officially spelled without macrons, something made clear to the Regional Council 18 months ago in a direction by Environment Court Judge Jeff Smith, in accordance with the wishes of the island residents.

Motiti's outstanding natural character is without macrons.

Regional Council communications advisor Sue-Ellen Craig attributes the re-macronisation of Motiti throughout the Rena decision and the council's Regional Policy Statement to a computer error.

'We don't know how that happened because as a council we are aware that Motiti doesn't have macrons.

'I can guess that it was probably done on a computer that had the automatic macron thing, and it's added them all in. That's been amended and the document's been changed, and an apology's been sent through to the chair of the Motiti Rohe Moana Trust.”

The Regional Council was given 10 days to check the Rena Decision for facts before it was sent out to the parties. It's thought the macrons were added by whoever typed up the decision for the commissioners.

'I'm not sure how that happened,” says Sue-Ellen. 'It's a document that was generated by the commissioners before it came into us and for us it was important just to get it out so everyone was aware of what that decision was.

'In theory everybody is aware of it and it happens before anything gets released, and I know that IT has also taken off that automatic macron thing that everybody has on their computers, but it doesn't stop it like that for the commissioners. I don't know who typed that up for them.

'It's one of those things. Sometimes it's really good to have them come on automatically but other times it's not.

'So that's why it was released and little errors like that are being corrected so that there's a final document.”

The spell checking began Monday morning, and is not expected to take too long. The revised one will be uploaded to the website once all the changes have been made to it.

The official spelling of Motiti without macrons was confirmed in an order of the Environment Court dated November 13, 2014, which was a result of Maori interests taking the regional council to court over its degrading without consultation, of the Astrolabe reef's outstanding natural character in the Regional Policy Statement. The character of the reef and other nearby features was also restored.