Whangārei District Council may axe summer freedom campers programme in Northland

Whangārei District Council is asking ratepayers whether they want to take over the cost of ensuring freedom campers comply with rules. Photo / 123rf

Whangārei ratepayers have been asked to consider footing the bill of a programme that ensures summer freedom campers follow district rules, as government funding dries up.

If they refuse, Whangārei District Council might axe the programme altogether and risk an escalation in rogue campers who don’t comply.

Spaces under council control are regulated under its Camping in Public Places by-law. Monitoring and enforcement have been carried out each season (December - February) through the Responsible Freedom Camping Ambassador Programme - a service financed through a contestable fund allocated by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) since 2018. This has been afforded to districts experiencing strain on their infrastructure and resources from huge increases in freedom campers.

The programme received $200,000 this year. However, MBIE has advised the fund might not be available for the next financial year.

If ratepayers took on the cost of the programme, they could expect a further 0.16 per cent on top of the 17.2 per cent rates hike they already faced. And a friendly education component in which volunteer “ambassadors” inform campers about Whangārei’s expectations of them - would be dropped.

The public could have its say on whether ratepayers should foot the bill for a continued service as part of council’s long-term planning programme, for which submissions close on Friday.

Last season, part of the programme involved volunteer ambassadors visiting 14 of the district’s most popular freedom camping sites every evening over nine weeks, advising campers on responsible freedom camping practices, answering questions and collecting data.

A proliferation of freedom campers at Kowharewa Bay on Northland's Tūtūkākā coast became an issue that resulted in 2021 to Whangārei District Council making changes to its 2017 Camping in Public Places Bylaw. The regulation has since been kept in check with a service funded by a government grant. However, that's set to dry up. Photo / Susan Botting

While resident and ratepayer groups said they supported the continuation of the service, they questioned the time they’d been given to consider the issue, whether the $140,000 yearly figure needed to continue the programme should come from rates, why the volunteer ambassadors programme needed to be dropped and why council hadn’t proffered an option to retain it?

In its consultation document, council presented two options - either for ratepayers to fund a pared back service or do away with it altogether.

The advantages of ratepayer funding would be: council would be able to do some freedom camping monitoring and deal with complaints; there would be reduced risk of water, litter, nuisance or environmental harm in freedom camping areas; council could continue to regulate and manage freedom camping in council-controlled spaces via its by-law.

Disadvantages of doing away with the service would include the council losing its ability to monitor, manage and regulate freedom camping or respond to complaints, a potential for an increase in unenforced freedom camping and community dissatisfaction.

Spanish freedom camper Carlo Casado hears more about where to camp and how to do it responsibly from WDC's responsible freedom camping "ambassadors" co-ordinator Sue Halliwell at Pārua Bay, Whangārei Heads. Photo / Michael Cunningham

Whangārei Heads Citizens’ Association president Jan Boyes said the programme was not perfect, but it was important.

She suggested council could trim some of its other operations rather than force ratepayers to pay for it.

She questioned why the educational aspect of the programme needed to go - and had seemingly cost $60,000 - when it was staffed by volunteers.

She assumed a lot of the funding went to the security company who were employed to regularly check freedom camping sites. However, she also noted the regularity of those checks were one of the reasons the programme wasn’t currently running as well as it could be. Campers knew when security was due to turn up so deliberately avoided them, Boyes said.

In her experience at Whangārei Heads, it was some “strong local personalities” who were really doing the job of monitoring and compliance, and doing so voluntarily.

Tūtūkākā Coast Residents and Ratepayers Association secretary Rebecca Williams was reluctant to comment as the group was still developing its freedom camping position.

She said council needed to engage stakeholders earlier on these types of issues that were highly relevant to communities such as the Tūtūkākā Coast, which had a tourist focus.

There had been some engagement by the council with ratepayer associations from across the district earlier this year but it didn’t cover specific issues such as freedom camping, Williams said.

She personally agreed with Boyes it was important to continue monitoring and compliance of freedom camping and that the money ideally had to come from somewhere that did not impact rates, which were already going to be massively increased.

Freedom campers love Northland, which some years hosts up to a third of all international campervan tourists to New Zealand. How will the council pay to keep these visitors in check if government funding dries up? Photo / Supplied

Council manager for health and bylaws Reiner Mussle said freedom camping compliance had improved since the introduction of the Responsible Freedom Camping Ambassador Programme in 2017 and could decline if the programme was discontinued.

Asked why the council needed a separate service to monitor and enforce it, Reiner said, “There is no spare capacity through the main Regulatory Enforcement Services contract to provide freedom camping enforcement, as this cost-effective contract runs very lean.

If the cost was passed to ratepayers, the exact allocation of the funds would be decided at a meeting on May 21. It would “depend on several variables including seasonality and demand peaks and troughs”.

He noted previous seasons’ funding actually enabled monitoring and enforcement from Labour weekend through to mid-April.

“Outside that funded FC season, no proactive monitoring occurred and any (rare) complaints where dealt with through the contract by the bylaws compliance team.”

A pared back version of the programme would still include a “limited” component of education by freedom camping enforcement staff but not to the level of that previously delivered by the volunteer ambassadors.