On Tuesday, more than 400 solicitors, surveyors and NSW Land Titles employees, including a busload from Tamworth, gathered at Parliament House in Sydney to protest the move.

Now they’re back home to garner the community’s support in the fight, to ensure the Land Property Information department is not sold off.

The Leader has been told tenders for the lease will close on Friday.

It follows an announcement by the State Government that it would lease the titling and registry functions of Land and Property Information (LPI) to a private entity for 35 years to garner $2 billion for infrastructure.

Tamworth surveyor Mitchel Hanlon was one of the keynote speakers at Tuesday’s protest and said the lease would not benefit regional NSW.

“Our concern is, it is the selling of a world-class system of land titling, it works very well and is in fact exported around the world,” he said.

“The Russians have adopted it, so have the Thai and other countries in the Middle East have adopted it in their strata system. The government is saying it is not good enough and they need to invest in new technology.

“Once the tenders close, the government will make a decision on the concession holder.”

Mr Hanlon believed funds from the lease would be used to fund the construction of sporting precincts in Sydney.

“The thing is, once it is lost to the people of NSW, you can never get it back,” he said. “It would be hard for the government to step in again and take over the running itself. The people who run it are unique and you can’t get 400 people with the equivalent training in the private sector.”

“In a nutshell it is undervalued, a risk to people’s titles and the money won’t come into regional NSW.”

“We could borrow one billion (to upgrade the system) and that money could be repaid from the current profits of the LPI.” The Leader has approached the NSW Treasury for comment.