The Marlborough District Council has tweaked its bylaw to stop people staying too long at its Wairau Diversion site. Photo: MARLBOROUGH EXPRESS / LDR
Marlborough's freedom camping bylaw has been slightly tweaked in a bid to curb overstayers getting around the rules.
The council's responsible camping bylaw, adopted in 2023 following a lengthy legal dispute, said that the maximum period anyone could camp at the Wairau Diversion was "two consecutive nights in any four-week period".
The same rule applied in the council's 11 other camping sites across the region.
However, a report prepared by the council's parks and open spaces planner Linda Craighead said there had been an "issue with interpretation", as people would leave for a day and then return again within the same four-week period.
That pattern was often repeated by the same camper multiple times during the four-week period.
The Marlborough District Council has 11 freedom camping sites. Photo: MARLBOROUGH EXPRESS / LDR
At a full council meeting on 31 October, the council agreed to modify its bylaw to clarify campers could only stay two nights in any four-week period, irrespective of whether the nights were consecutive or not.
Craighead said at the meeting the change had been checked with the council's legal team and did not require public consultation.
The council also made some minor changes, such as increasing infringements from $200 to $400, after a review of the council's bylaw in July last year, prompted by the government's replacement of the Freedom Camping Act with the new Self-Contained Motor Vehicles Legislation Act in June 2023.
Craighead had said at the time that if the council found any changes to the bylaw were needed due to the new legislation it could be "terrible".
The council had gone back and forth on freedom camping bylaws for the best part of two decades, with a 2020 version closing eight freedom camping sites.
The New Zealand Motor Caravan Association had argued the 2020 bylaw was "disproportionate and unreasonable", because it undermined a long-held New Zealand tradition, and punished "tens of thousands of responsible Kiwi families".
A High Court decision, released in December 2021, ruled the council had adopted a bylaw that "significantly changed what it had proposed and consulted on".
As a result, the council drew up the current bylaw, adopted in March last year, which took the number of freedom camping sites in the region to 11.
The Wairau Diversion is the council’s largest freedom camping site. Photo: MARLBOROUGH EXPRESS / LDR
At the full council meeting last week, deputy mayor David Croad said the changes were "minor".
"And obviously things on a national front continue to change and we need to update our own bylaw in keeping with those," Croad said.
Meanwhile, an information package report prepared for an assets and services meeting on 12 November said the number of freedom campers was increasing as the weather warmed, and there had been an "upward trend" of homeless people using parks and reserves.
Council rangers were doing "periodic patrols" with full-time summer monitoring to start on 1 December.
The report said council staff had also attended a meeting with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment as there was a proposal to extend the transitional period for freedom camping vehicles to be certified under new self-containment requirements.
A new certification system was to come into effect in June 2025, however only 1500 of the estimated 68,000 privately owned self-contained vehicles in New Zealand had been certified under the new system, the report said.
"In order for the June 2025 deadline to be met, an estimated 11,000 vehicles per month will need to be certified from January.
"Central government is consulting on whether the deadline for private self-contained vehicles should be extended to reduce the pressure on certification authorities."
* LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
