Couple told to remove security cameras

A North Shore couple has been ordered to remove security cameras scanning the public road outside their secluded waterfront home.

But Coert and Jenny Vorster say the cameras are to protect themselves against thefts and vandalism.

"We have had our postbox blown up and vandals pulled out my $8000 palm trees," Mrs Vorster told the Herald. "I had the cops out here five times last year."

Mrs Vorster said the gate intercom had been broken and the large stone eagles mounted on the gate pillars bashed. Rotting fish, condoms and beer bottles were dumped over the fence.

"After seven years I couldn't take it any more and put the cameras up. Suddenly, now they know the camera is there, the place is clean."

The large Torbay property has two cameras mounted on 6m-high stands with 2m outreach arms to record from above the public footpath. A third camera hangs over the road and has a commanding view of the entrance to Waiake Beach.

But the North Shore City Council said it had received complaints about the cameras and a 1.8m-tall mesh fence on what is a legal road.

"The public have an expectation that their lawful use of the road will not be privately monitored at whim," said the council's consents manager, Gary Bendall, in a report to North Shore City councillors yesterday.

Mr Bendall doubted the Vorsters' claim that the public benefited from surveillance of the road.

Members of the council's infrastructure committee declined retrospective consent for the cameras, saying they were on public land and must be removed within 21 days.

A neighbour of the Vorsters, Brian Fairchild, said he had no privacy concerns about the camera.

"It's a sign of the times," he said. "It's just a person doing something for himself in an area which otherwise police and traffic management might do."

He said a neighbourhood watch operated in the street and people looked out for one another.

Security firms contacted yesterday said it was rare for homeowners to have cameras scanning public areas.

Chris West, owner of Securitek, said: "We don't allow the camera to go outside the boundary of the house, because it infringes on privacy".