Editorial: Mobile trader fee hike is fair

Mr Whippy mobile trader Nicholas Wynne is horrified at new council charges.

Tauranga mobile shop traders should not be too outraged by the city council's plans to increase their fees.

The annual licence fee is set to treble from $226 to $750 a year and the annual Food Hygiene Regulations registration fee will also go up by $5 to $390.

The main reason the fees are increasing is so they line up with charges imposed in other regions. Mobile traders in the Bay have been enjoying a favourable trading environment for some time, if that is the case.

Nicholas Wynne, who runs a Mr Whippy van, is mobilising his fellow traders to protest the increase, describing at as extortion. He highlights the fact that, in contrast, the council proposes to drop the fees for brothels.

Other mobile traders highlight the mistake last year when the council failed to notify mobile traders who were "new kids on the block" about a rule change in which they had to move on every 15 minutes.

The communications botch up forced one woman to sell her business while others were left thousands of dollars out of pocket from the trade restriction.

Mobile traders have certainly been under the spotlight recently and they are right to be angry about the council mistake over the rule change, but the hike in fees is an entirely different matter.

The increase will take the fee up to what some others councils are charging, including Auckland, Hamilton, New Plymouth and Wellington. It also addresses concerns from retailers who own stores and pay rates every year for the privilege.

Perhaps, though, the council could have staggered the increase over several years to give traders time to adjust. It is important that conventional retailers, who are already facing strong competition from online sales, are not disadvantaged for committing to a retail space.

Mobile traders provide colour and variety to the retail scene but there has to be a degree of fairness and these changes appear to go some way towards achieving that.